London: Taylor and Francis, 1853. 1st Edition. FIRST EDITION of an important and consequential paper in which John Couch Adams announces new mathematical methods in dealing with the pertubations of the Moon, and in so doing corrects Laplace's famed 1788 memoir. Laplace studied the Moon's mean rate of motion relative... More
![“On the Apparent Projection of Stars upon the Moon’s Disk in Occultations” in The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, Volume XXVIII [28], Read April 8, 1859, pp. 173-186. George Biddell Airy.](/pictures/thumb/544_1.jpg?v=1492805656)
London: Taylor and Francis, 1859. 1st Edition. FIRST EDITION EXTRACT IN FINE CONDITION. In 1850 in a letter to the Observatory, the astronomer Frederick Stratton posited a question. He asked “if modern lunar observers were familiar with the phenomenon of stellar projection and if they had some simple explanation of... More
New York: American Physical Society, 1982. 1st Edition. FIRST EDITION IN PAPER WRAPS OF ONE OF TWO INDEPENDENT PROPOSALS FOR ‘NEW INFLATION’ (the other was by Andre Linde). “Hot big-bang cosmology depends upon special conditions for the early universe to explain the high degree of homogeneity and the nearly critical... More
Lancaster: The American Physical Society, 1949. 1st Edition. FIRST EDITION IN ORIGINAL WRAPS OF THE PREDICTION BY ALPHER & HERMAN OF THE TEMPERATURE OF COSMIC MICROWAVE BACKGROUND RADIATION (CMB) TO BE 5 DEGREES K. In Big Bang cosmology, CMB is the thermal radiation left over from the time of recombination... More
Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 1848. 1st Edition. FIRST EDITION OF BECQUEREL’S FIRST REPORT OF THE FIRST PHOTOGRAPHS OF SOLAR SPECTRA. Becquerel took the photos in 1842 and they were first reported here in this volume. Included is Becquerel’s methodology in preparing silver plates so as to obtain an image of the solar... More
Lancaster: American Physical Society, 1937. 1st Edition. FIRST EDITION IN ORIGINAL WRAPS of Bethe's seminal paper work on neucleosynthesis, "Energy Production in Stars." Bethe's work on nuclear reactions relied heavily on the development of quantum mechanics, and resulted in the occurance of some classically forbidden reactions; and this same work... More
Lancaster: American Institute of Physics, 1939. 1st Edition. FIRST EDITION, FIRST PRINTING of Bethe's seminal papers on neucleosynthesis, "Energy Production in Stars" and "Energy Production in Stars II." Full volume inclusive of many other important papers. Bethe's work on nuclear reactions relied heavily on the development of quantum mechanics, and resulted... More
1728. 1st Edition. First Edition of George Bernhard Bilfinger’s De Causa gravitatis physica generali disquisitio experimentalis (On the General Physical Cause of Gravity) – a prize winning explanation of the cause of the weight of bodies designed to check Galileo's and Edme Mariotte's theories. In so doing, Bilfinger discusses the... More
New York: The American Physical Society, 1969. 1st Edition. 1969 FIRST EDITION IN ORIGINAL WRAPS of an enormously influential paper that provided the first empirical evidence of the existence of quarks within the atomic nucleus. In demonstrating that quarks are real particles, Friedman, Kendall, and Taylor confirmed Murray Gell-Mann’s hypothesis... More
Lancaster: American Institute of Physics, 1939. 1st Edition. FIRST EDITION IN ORIGINAL WRAPS OF TWO SEMINAL PAPERS IN THE HISTORY OF PHYSICS. Bohr and Wheeler's "The mechanism of nuclear fission" is the first fully worked out theory of nuclear fission and it laid the groundwork for atomic and hydrogen bombs... More
Lancaster: American Institute of Physics, 1939. 1st Edition. FIRST EDITION OF THREE SEMINAL PAPERS IN THE HISTORY OF PHYSICS. BOHR & WHEELER'S "The mechanism of nuclear fission" is the first fully worked out theory of nuclear fission and it laid the groundwork for atomic and hydrogen bombs. "The paper is... More
London: 1964. 1st Edition. FIRST EDITION, RARE OFFPRINT OF A MAJOR PUBLICATION BY BONDI IN THE STUDY OF SPACETIME SINGULARITIES AND GRAVITATIONAL WAVES AND COLLAPSE. In 1957 and in a paper we offer separately, Hermann Bondi demonstrated that gravitation waves indeed carry energy, and furthermore that in order to carry... More
London: Royal Astronomical Society, 1969. 1st Edition. FIRST EDITION, RARE OFFPRINT OF BONDI ON GRAVITATIONAL BOUNCE IN GENERAL RELATIVITY. Hermann Bondi discusses the adiabatic collapse solutions of uniform density spheres under differing assumptions regarding density and central pressure. In discussing the problem of collapse and bounce, Bondi made two assumptions: “first... More
London: Harrison and Sons, 1964. 1st Edition. FIRST EDITION OFFPRINT of “famous import in classic astrophysics” (SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System). This paper by the Anglo-Austrian physicist Hermann Bondi studies whether redshifts could be of gravitational origin and “served as a theoretical guidepost for planetary and super-planetary relative motion calculation” (ibid)... More
1962. 1st Edition. FIRST EDITION, RARE OFFPRINT OF AN IMPORTANT LECTURE DELIVERED BY BONDI AT OXFORD IN MAY OF 1962; this is the first printed version. The following represent just a few scientists whose work Bondi speaks of in his lecture: Michelson-Morley, Milne, Lorentz, Einstein, Maxwell, Wheeler, Feynman, Hogarth, Penrose... More
BOUND FIRST EDITION OF HERMANN BONDI’S 1957 THOUGHT EXPERIMENT DEMONSTRATING THAT GRAVITATIONAL WAVES INDEED CARRY ENERGY, and furthermore that in order to carry energy (and momentum), gravitational waves must be nonlinear. Gravitational waves, or ripples in the fabric of spacetime, were first predicted by Einstein’s 1916 general theory of relativity... More
!["The Steady-State Theory of the Expanding Universe,” [Bondi & Gold] in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 108, No. 3, pp. 252-270, 1948. WITH "A New Model for the Expanding Universe," [Hoyle] in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 108, No. 5, pp. 372-382, 1938. Hermann Bondi, Thomas Gold, Fred Hoyle.](/pictures/thumb/862_1.jpg?v=1492805695)
London: Royal Astronomical Society, 1948. 1st Edition. RARE FIRST EDITIONS, EACH IN ORIGINAL WRAPS, OF THE FIRST PUBLISHED PAPERS PRESENTING THE ‘STEADY-STATE’ MODEL OF THE UNIVERSE. BONDI, GOLD, & HOYLE (WORKING INDEPENDENTLY) HERE PROPOSE THE MOST WELL-DEVELOPED AND LONG-LIVED STEADY-STATE THEORIES OF THE UNIVERSE. Bondi, Gold, and Hoyle’s arguments have... More
FIRST EDITION OF THE BRANS-DICKE THEORY OF GRAVITY, “the best-known example of the class of theories called “scalar-tensor” theories because they contain both scalars and tensors in the field equations relating the curvature of space to the matter in the universe. In Brans-Dicke, the gravitational constant becomes a variable, and... More
1957. 1st Edition. FIRST EDITION IN ORIGINAL WRAPS of a seminal 100+ page paper that "describes hydrogen and helium are formed in the interior of stars" (Daintith, Oxford Dictionary of Scientists, 268). This paper, widely considered "one of the most authoritative and comprehensive works of modern science" is so famous... More
Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 1922. 1st Edition. FIRST EDITION OF THE FOUR PAPERS THAT COMPRISE THE EINSTEIN-CARTAN THEORY OF GRAVIATION (ECT). “In theoretical physics, the Einstein-Cartan theory is a classical theory of gravitation similar to general relativity, but relaxing the assumption that the affine connection has vanishing antisymmetric part (torsion tensor), so... More
![“De l’Aberration apparente des E’toiles, causée par le mouvement progressif de la Lumiére” [Clairaut] WITH “La Figure de la Terre determinée” [Maupertuis] in Mémoires de l’Académie Royale des Sciences Année 1737, pp. 205-228 [Clairaut]; pp. 389-469 [Maupertuis], 1740. Alexis Claude de WITH Pierre Louis de Maupertuis Clairaut.](/pictures/thumb/869_1.jpg?v=1492805695)
Paris: L’imprimerie Royale. 1st Edition. FIRST EDITIONS OF 2 IMPORTANT PAPERS: CLAIRAUT ON STELLAR ABERRATION, THE FIRST DIRECT CONFIRMATION OF THE COPERNICAN THEORY with MAUPERTUIS & HIS OFFICIAL REPORT ON THE LAPLAND EXPEDITION TO MEASURE THE SHAPE OF THE EARTH. THE TRIPS CONFIRMED NEWTON’S DYNAMIC & SUPPORTED THE OBLATE SHAPE... More
London: Macmillan. 1st Edition. TWO BOUND VOLUMES. FIRST EDITIONS OF BOTH THE SEMINAL 1959 SETI PAPER (the SEARCH FOR EXTRATERRESTRIAL INTELLIGENCE) ADVOCATING THE USE OF MICROWAVE COMMUNICATION (radio signals) FOR INTERSTELLAR COMMUNICATION & the 1961 PAPER SUGGESTING THE USE OF PULSED OPTICAL LASER SIGNALS AS A MEANS OF COMMUNICATION ACROSS... More
1st Edition. FIRST EDITIONS OF FOUR IMPORTANT PAPERS RELATING TO JAMES COOK’S 1769 Endeavor Expedition to observe the 1769 Transit of Venus. Astoundingly, astronomer Thomas Hornsby’s paper deduces a solar parallax almost identical to modern results. Three papers by Cook are present, one written with the astronomer Charles Green. As... More
London: Macmillan, 1878. 1st Edition. FIRST EDITION OF GEORGE DARWIN’S FISSION THEORY OF THE FORMATION OF THE MOON. The history of modern lunar origin theory dates to this paper. A reprint of this paper was published in the 1879 Philosophical Transactions; that paper is sometimes misidentified as a first edition... More
![“The Bakerian Lecture. On Some Total Solar Eclipse of July 18th, 1860, observed at Rivabellosa, near Miranda de Ebro, in Spain”. [Received January 30, Read April 10, 1862] extracted from Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London for the Year 1862, 152, Part I, Pp. 333-416. Warren De la Rue.](/pictures/thumb/837_1.jpg?v=1492805690)
London: Taylor and Francis, 1862. 1st Edition. FIRST EDITION COMPLETE EXTRACT FROM THE PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS (WITH PLATES) OF DE LA RUE’S BAKERIAN LECTURE PRESENTING HIS GROUNDBREAKING ASTRONOMICAL PHOTOGRAPHY OF THE SOLAR ECLIPSE OF 1860. Included are thirteen de la Rue’s plates, among them are some of the most famous images... More