American University Rare Book Room
The Institute's first visit to a rare book room was to that at American University. The following is a list of the books that we examined. Following each are a few comments about it which reveal its historical importance. Several of the books displayed were chosen because they related to one research project or another.
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Euclid (fl. ca. 300 BC). 1570.
The elements of geometrie of the most auncient philosopher
Euclide of Megara faithfully (now first)
translated into the Englishe toung by H. Billingsley, citizen
of London; whereunto are annexed certaine scholies,
annotations, and inventions, of the best mathematiciens, both
of time past and in this our age; with a very fruitfull
praeface made by M.I. Dee, specifying the chief mathematicall
scieces, what they are, and whereunto commodious; where, also
are disclosed certaine new secrets mathematicall and
mechanicall, untill these our daies, greatly missed.
London : Imprinted by Iohn Daye, 1570.
The first edition of Euclid to appear in English is a magnificent volume (or two, as it is bound at AU). Most impressive is book XI with it's fold up diagrams, one of which is pictured in Katz's A History of Mathematics, p. 365 (you can make a nice overhead from it).
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William Oughtred (1575-1660). 1647.
The key of the mathematicks new forged and filed: together with a Treatise of
the resolution of all kinds of affected aequations in numbers. With the rule of
compound usury; and demonstration of the rule of false position. And a most
easie art of delineating all manner of plaine sun-dyalls. Geometrically taught,
by Will. Oughtred.
[There are no copies of this work listed in OCLC (Online Computer Library Caltagoue), yet there are two copies at American University. Only one has the portrait of Oughtred.]
This is the first English edition of Oughtred's Clavis Mathematicae (1637), a work which influenced the young Newton.
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Rene Descartes (1596-1650). 1649.
Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica.
Lugduni Batavorum : Ex Officina Ioannis Maire, 1649.
Bound together here with one of the most important philosophical works of Descartes is the first Latin translation of his Geometrie, the second appendix of his Discourse de la Methode (1637). This work contains commentary by Florimond de Beaune (1601-1652) and Frans van Schooten (1615-1660). It was interesting to compare the bulk of the commentaries in this work with those in the second Latin edition (which we saw later at the Naval Observatory Library).
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J.-L. (Jean-Louis) Boucharlat (d. 1848). 1828.
An elementary treatise on the differential and integral calculus
Cambridge : W. P. Grant, 1828.
Translation of Elemens de calcul differentiel et de calcul integral.
Chosen as an example of the many calculus texts in the Martin Collection at AU. This one is important in that it was used as a textbook at the United States Military Academy at West Point. Being a translation, it shows the French influence on American mathematics early in the nineteenth-century.
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Byrne, Oliver,
The first six books of the elements of Euclid, in which coloured diagrams and symbols are used instead of letters for the greater ease of learners,
London, W. Pickering, 1847.
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Carroll, Lewis, 1832-1898,
Euclid and his modern rivals,
London, Macmillan and Co., 1879.
This work has been reprinted by Dover.
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S. C. (Sylvester Clark) Gould (1840-1909).
Bibliography on the polemic problem, What is the value of ... , Manchester, N.H., 1888.
An interesting annotated bibliography dealing with the problem of squaring the circle. It contains both crazy things as well as important works. Such bibliographies are very useful to the historian of mathematics.
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Rufus Fuller, 1893
A double discovery. The square of the circle.
Boston, MA, Printed for the author, 1893.
This is an example of crank literature. The first clue is that the frontispiece is a picture of the author. The second is that the work is "Printed for the author." The third is that Diagram 16 claims that pi equals 3949/27889 exactly. Serious mathematicians don't do such things. Nonetheless, the book does have value as a curiosity. Students should be shown things like this as a simple exercise in sorting the wheat from the chaff in the vast mathematical literature.
The American University is part of the Washington Research Library Consortium. If you would like to search for other items in the library
you can reach it via telnet:
telnet aladi.wrlc.org
Unfortunately there seems to be no way to search for all books in the Artemas Martin Collection.
If you have comments, send email to
V. Frederick Rickey at fred-rickey@usma.edu