Nikolai Lobachevsky (1792-1856)

Starting price
£ 24 000
Auction dateClassic
28.04.2021 11:00UTC +01:00
Auctioneer
CHRISTIE'S
Event location
United Kingdom, London
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ID 519330
Lot 40 | Nikolai Lobachevsky (1792-1856)
Nikolai Lobachevsky (1792-1856)
Uchenye zapiski. Kazan: at the University, 1834 Parts I and II; [together with:] 1835 Parts I and II; [and:] 1836 Parts I and II.
Six complete issues of the scientific journal founded by ‘the Copernicus of geometry’ (PMM), mostly preserved in the original printed wrappers. Lobachevsky’s contributions to these early journal issues include: ‘On the Convergence of Trigonometrical Series’ (1834), a non-gemoetrical paper on the subject of alegbra and the theoretical aspects of infinite series; a long article covering his ground-breaking discovery of ‘Imaginary Geometry’ (1835); and a continuation of this work entitled ‘Application of Imaginary Geometry to Certain Integrals’ (1836). Developed independently from the work of Carl Friedrich Gauss and János Bolyai, Lobachevsky’s ‘imaginary’ (i.e. non-Euclidean) geometry ‘was the product of some two millennia of criticism of the Elements. […] It was Lobachevsky’s merit to refute the uniqueness of Euclid’s geometry, and to consider it as a special case of a more general system’ (DSB).

6 volumes in 5, octavo (approx. 240 x 140mm). 1834 Parts I and II: folding table; 1835 Part I: engraved folding plate, 2 folding tables (quire 4 loose); 1835 Part II (faint marginal waterstain in quires 10-14, last leaf trimmed at lower margin); 1836 Part I: folding plate, folding table (some creasing at upper margin); 1836 Part II: 3 folding plates. Parts I and II of 1834 bound together in contemporary Russian blindstamped calf (extremities lightly rubbed); the remaining parts preserved in original printed wrappers (some faint staining, a few small tears and losses, larger tear at upper spine of 1836 Part II).
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