Products
(Art Nouveau) [Verneuil, Maurice Pillard] | Le Décor Floral
£1,500.00
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A striking Art Nouveau design portfolio, unusual for using photography to depict geometric floral arrangements.
This portfolio is usually attributed to the French designer and commercial artist Maurice Pillard Verneuil (1869-1942), a student of Eugène Grasset whose career successfully spanned both Art Nouveau and Art Deco eras. If so it would be his only known photographic work. As bookseller Daniela Kromp has explained, it may be that Verneuil was inspired by the Viennese pioneer of botanical photography, Martin Gerlach (1846-1918), who was producing botanical portfolios as early as 1893.
“Although in Helen Bieri Thomson's bibliography, Verneuil is named as the author (or editor) of Le Décor Floral (cf. p. 118), he isn't known as a photographer so far. Thus, Verneuil presumably has not done the photographs himself, but at least he made the arrangements of the plants and of each particular plate... it is known that Verneuil made a journey to Vienna in 1902 (cf. Thomson p. 13). Perhaps he got to know Martin Gerlach's photographic work there in detail and received the essential inspiration for Le Décor Floral” (Kromp, "Short List for London 2018", item 45).
The publisher of this set, Librairie Centraledes Beaux-Arts, was one of the primary firms of the Art Nouveau movement, producing important work by Alphonse Mucha and Eugène Grasset, as well as other important portfolios by Verneuil.
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Documents d’Art Décoratif d’après Nature...50 Planches. Bordures et Panneaux Semis, Fonds ornés, etc. Paris: Librairie Centraledes Beaux-Arts, [c. 1904].
Folio. Half title and 50 tinted collotype prints after photographs, 4-page title and publisher’s prospectus printed in green and brown. In the original linen-backed card portfolio with linen ties. Bernard Quaritch ink stamp to the title, ink stamp of the Birmingham Assay office Library to the inside of the cover. Portfolio browned and rubbed with some wear at the corners and slight creasing to the upper cover, linen ties browned but intact, title and prospectus toned and a little rubbed at the extremities, plates very faintly toned at the edges. Portfolio professionally cleaned and spine caps repaired by Bainbridge Conservation. Very good condition.
(Brenner, Sydney) Douarin, Nicole le | Dans le Secret des Êtres Vivants
£250.00
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First edition, first impression, paperback issue. Presentation copy inscribed by the author to Nobel Prize-winning biologist Sydney Brenner on the half title, “It has been great to have the chance to know you. Thanks to Gulbenkian! With my admiration and my sincére amitié, these pages about my life in science. Paris, le 26 Juillet 2012, Nicole le Douarin”. Gulbenkian probably refers to the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, a philanthropic organisation which may have held a conference or other event at which Douarin and Brenner met.
Recipient Sydney Brenner (1927 - ) has been a leader in the field of genetics almost from the moment he received his doctorate at Oxford in 1954. He joined Francis Crick’s laboratory in 1956, and they did groundbreaking research on how DNA is decoded by cells. Brenner proposed that the nucleotides which comprise DNA (adenine, guanine, thiamine and cytosine) are read by the cell in sets of three called codons, with each codon representing an amino acid (for example, three adenines in a row is the codon for the amino acid lysine). A gene is simply a string of codons that directs the production of a protein molecule from individual amino acids. He also correctly predicted the existence of messenger RNA, the molecule that carries the genetic code from the nucleus to the ribosomes, where the translation process occurs.
Following this work, it was Brenner’s efforts to establish a new laboratory organism for the study of genetics that led to his Nobel Prize. “Beginning in 1965, he began to lay the groundwork to make C. elegans, a small, transparent nematode, into a major model organism for genetics, neurobiology and developmental biology research. As a direct result of his original vision, this tiny worm became the first animal for which the complete cell lineage and entire neuronal wiring were known. Today, more than 1,000 investigators are studying C. elegans, and Brenner’s work was further honored when a closely related nematode was named Caenorhabditis brenneri” (Salk Institute biography).
Author Nicole le Douarin (1930 - ) is a leader in the field of developmental biology. She has designed important techniques for studying differentiation in embryos, most importantly the creation of chimeras in which cells from two different species can be individually tracked as they develop into organ systems. Crucially, she used this technique to elucidate the early development of the nervous and immune systems. Douarin has recieved numerous accolades for her work. “In 1988 she was only the third woman in 500 years to be admitted as a member of the College de France. In 1989 she was elected as a member of the US National Academy of Science and in 1990 as a fellow of the Royal Society. She also received the Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine in 1990 and in 1991 she became an officer of the Légion d’Honneur. In 1993 she received the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia University. She is an honorary fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (2002) and was the first recipient of the Pearl Meister Greengard Prize for women in science and biology (2004)” (The Embryo Project Encyclopedia).
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...Itinéraire d'une Biologiste. Péreface de Mona Ozouf et Michelle Perrot.
Paris: Robert Laffont, 2012.
Pefect bound. Original white wrappers printed in blue and black. With the publisher’s wraparound band. Minor bump to head of spine. An excellent, fresh copy.
(Brenner, Sydney) Perutz, Max F. | Ging's ohne Forschung Besser?
£350.00
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First edition, first impression. Presentation copy inscribed by the author to his close friend and colleague, Nobel prize-winning biologist Sydney Brenner, on the half title, “To Sydney, as ammunition, from Max”. The present volume is a short discussion of the relationship between science and public policy, and it is unclear how the contents were intended as ammunition for Brenner. Works signed by Perutz are uncommon.
Author Max Perutz (1914-2002) was an eminent molecular biologist who founded a major Cambridge research institute, the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology, and who was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1962 for his study of the structures of haemoglobin and myoglobin. It was at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology that the recipient, Sydney Brenner (1927-2019), spent the first twenty years of his career, and where he made major breakthroughs in genetics alongside Francis Crick.
Beginning in 1956, Brenner and Crick did groundbreaking research on how DNA is decoded by cells. Brenner proposed that the nucleotides which comprise DNA (adenine, guanine, thiamine and cytosine) are read by the cell in sets of three called codons, with each codon representing an amino acid (for example, three adenines in a row is the codon for the amino acid lysine). A gene is simply a string of codons that directs the production of a protein molecule from individual amino acids. He also correctly predicted the existence of messenger RNA, the molecule that carries the genetic code from the nucleus to the ribosomes, where the translation process occurs.
Following this work, it was Brenner’s efforts to establish a new laboratory organism for the study of genetics that led to his Nobel Prize. “Beginning in 1965, he began to lay the groundwork to make C. elegans, a small, transparent nematode, into a major model organism for genetics, neurobiology and developmental biology research. As a direct result of his original vision, this tiny worm became the first animal for which the complete cell lineage and entire neuronal wiring were known. Today, more than 1,000 investigators are studying C. elegans, and Brenner’s work was further honored when a closely related nematode was named Caenorhabditis brenneri” (Salk Institute biography).
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...Der Einfluß der Naturwissenschaften auf die Gesellschaft. 20 Abbildungen und 5 Tabellen. Stuttgart: Wissenschaftliche Verlagsgesellschaft, 1982.
Perfect bound. Original glossy white wrappers printed in black and grey. Frontispiece, diagrams within the text. Wrappers partially yellowed, minor creasing affecting the lower half of the spine panel.
(Brenner, Sydney) Todd, Alexander | A Time to Remember. The Autobiography of a Chemist
£450.00
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First edition, first impression. From the library of Nobel Prize-winning biologist Sydney Brenner, presentation copy inscribed from the author to Brenner on the front blank, “With respect and warmest wishes, Alexander Todd, 24th May 1984”.
The author, biochemist Alexander Todd (1907-1997), was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1957 “for his work on the synthesis of nucleotides (the small units that make up the larger molecule of nucleic acids), the hereditary material of cells. This work led to many important advances in chemistry and biochemistry”, including the elucidation of the structure of DNA by Watson and Crick (Shampo, “Alexander Todd”, Mayo Clinic Proceedings, March 2012).
Recipient Sydney Brenner was a leader in the field of genetics almost from the moment he received his doctorate at Oxford in 1954. He joined Francis Crick’s laboratory in 1956, and they did groundbreaking research on how DNA is decoded by cells. Brenner proposed that the nucleotides which comprise DNA (adenine, guanine, thiamine and cytosine) are read by the cell in sets of three called codons, with each codon representing an amino acid (for example, three adenines in a row is the codon for the amino acid lysine). A gene is simply a string of codons that directs the production of a protein molecule from individual amino acids. He also correctly predicted the existence of messenger RNA, the molecule that carries the genetic code from the nucleus to the ribosomes, where the translation process occurs.
Following this work, it was Brenner’s efforts to establish a new laboratory organism for the study of genetics that led to his Nobel Prize. “Beginning in 1965, he began to lay the groundwork to make C. elegans, a small, transparent nematode, into a major model organism for genetics, neurobiology and developmental biology research. As a direct result of his original vision, this tiny worm became the first animal for which the complete cell lineage and entire neuronal wiring were known. Today, more than 1,000 investigators are studying C. elegans, and Brenner’s work was further honored when a closely related nematode was named Caenorhabditis brenneri” (Salk Institute biography).
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Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
Octavo. Original blue cloth, titles to spine in silver. With the dust jacket. Remnants of a price sticker to the front flap of the jacket. Lower corner bumped. An excellent copy in the lightly rubbed jacket that is a little faded along the spine panel.
(Brenner, Sydney) Wollman, E. L. & F. Jacob | La Sexualité des Bactéries
£4,750.00
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First edition, first impression of this uncommon and important monograph on bacterial genetics. An exceptional presentation copy signed by author François Jacob, with whom Brenner would partner only a year later to perform one of the most elegant experiments in the history of biochemistry, proving the role of messenger RNA and elucidating a key mechanism in the cell’s process for decoding DNA. Cheekily inscribed by Jacob’s co-author, Elie Wollman (1917-2008), “To Sydney Brenner, to disgust him / a good of bacterial sex” (possibly missing the word “dose” or similar before “bacterial sex”). And with Brenner’s ownership signature in pencil on the upper cover.
Wollman and Jacob were bacteriologists at the Pasteur Institute who, by investigating bacterial reproduction, made groundbreaking discoveries in genetics. They published one of the first examples of a gene regulatory mechanism; discovered plasmids (portions of genetic material independent of the chromosomal DNA); and created the first model of gene mapping in a living organism” (Dantzer, “Elie Wollman 1917-2008: A Biographical Memoir, National Academy of Science, 2008). The present volume covers the breadth of contemporary knowledge of bacterial reproduction, including conjugation and the resulting genetic recombination. Jacob was later awarded the Nobel Prize for work on the regulation of enzyme levels in cells, and Wollman received several awards, including the French Legion of Honour.
Recipient Sydney Brenner (1927-2019) was a leader in the field of genetics almost from the moment he received his doctorate at Oxford in 1954. He joined Francis Crick’s Cambridge laboratory in 1956, and they performed innovative research on how DNA is decoded by cells. Brenner proposed that the nucleotides which comprise DNA (adenine, guanine, thiamine and cytosine) are read by the cell in groups of three called codons, with each codon representing an amino acid (for example, three adenines in a row is the codon for the amino acid lysine). A gene is therefore a string of codons that directs the production of a specific protein molecule from individual amino acids. He would later win the Nobel Prize for his work establishing the nematode c. elegans as a key model organism for genetics, neurobiology and developmental biology research.
Brenner met Jacob and Wollman at a symposium on microbial genetics in Copenhagen in 1959 (it was almost certainly on this occasion, or shortly afterwards, that this copy was presented), where Jacob hoped to discuss new evidence for the existence of an intermediary molecule responsible for transporting information from DNA in the nucleus to the site of protein production in cellular structures called ribosomes, located outside the nucleus. It was known that ribosomes contained an analogue to DNA, ribosomal nucleic acid (RNA), but it was not clear whether there were intermediaries between DNA and RNA. Though nothing concrete came of the Copenhagen symposium, the following spring Jacob again brought up the subject during a meeting with Brenner, Crick, and other biochemists at Cambridge. As Jacob later recalled, when he pointed out recent experimental results suggesting that, unlike normal RNA, the messenger molecule was unstable, “Francis and Sydney leaped to their feet. Began to gesticulate. To argue at top speed in great agitation. A red-faced Francis. A Sydney with bristling eyebrows. The two talked at once, all but shouting. Each trying to anticipate the other. To explain to the other what had suddenly come to mind” (Jacob, The Statue Within, p. 312). What Brenner and Crick had suddenly remembered was another experiment showing that when a certain virus attacked bacterial cells it blocked the creation of new ribosomes, and the only RNA then manufactured by the cell was both unstable and had the same base composition as DNA, strongly suggesting that it was the messenger molecule.
That afternoon Brenner and Jacob also learned that they had both been invited to spend the month of June as visiting scholars at Caltech, the perfect opportunity to collaborate and prove that there was an intermediary in the DNA decoding process and that it was the previously discovered unstable RNA. Most importantly, the colleague who had invited Jacob, Mat Meselson, had just developed a new method for marking bacterial macromolecules with heavy isotopes. Brenner and Jacob developed a plan “to distinguish whether, after phage (virus) infection, new RNA went to new ribosomes, or whether there were no new ribosomes, just the preexisting ones ‘for hire’ – Brenner’s phrase at the time – to the new message when it came along. So that old ribosomes could be labelled, the bacteria would be grown with heavy carbon and nitrogen, the bacteria switched to a broth containing normal, lighter isotopes and simultaneously infected with phage, and new RNA labelled with radiophosphorous. Then ribosomes would be separated from bacteria, put into a cesium-chloride solution, and spun at thirty-seven thousand revolutions per minute for thirty-six hours... in this enormous centrifugal force... the cesium chloride in the solution became distributed in a gradient that was denser towards the bottom of the tube; anything of like density in the tube would sink or float to the level that exactly corresponded with it. Thus, ribosomal particles grown heavy before infection would form a band farther down the centrifuge tube than any made after infection when the isotopic labels were light. Radioactivity could then be checked in each band of ribosomes” (Judson, The Eighth Day of Creation, p. 423).
With only four weeks to complete the experiment, Brenner and Jacob worked at speed and had to overcome numerous setbacks, from the difficulty of acquiring radioactive phosphorus to problems caused by a lack of magnesium in their culture medium. But the final result was “spectacular. Eyes glued to the Geiger counter, our throats tight, we tracked each successive figure as it came to take its place in exactly the order we had been expecting. And as the last sample was counted, a double shout of joy shook the basement at Caltech. Followed immediately by a wild double jig. This was merely one experiment, performed in extremis… But we now knew that we had won. That our conception explained the transfers of information in the synthesis of proteins… Scarcely was the experiment over than we gave a seminar at Caltech to demonstrate the existence of X and its role as magnetic tape. No one believed us. The next day we left, each to his own home. The bet had paid off. In the nick of time” (Jacob, p. 317).
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Paris: Masson et Cie, Libraires de l’Académie de Médecine, 1959.
Octavo. Original grey wrappers printed in black. 3 double-sided plates from photographs. Wrappers rubbed, a little creased, and partially tanned with a few small spots and marks. Slight crease affecting the margins of the first half of the contents. A very good copy.
(European Space Agency) Bjurstedt, Hilding | Biology and Medicine in Space
£100.00
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First and only edition of this uncommon volume on the biological research opportunities offered by Spacelab, the modular laboratory planned for the Space Shuttle as a joint project of NASA and the ESA. The lab was designed as a collection of components that could be used in various configurations according to the needs of each flight. There were twenty-two major Spacelab missions between 1983 and 1998, with individual components flying on a number of other missions.
The contents explain the areas of opportunity for biologists and medical researchers in orbit, including human calcium metabolism, the cardiovascular system, the senses, and the musculoskeletal system, cell and developmental biology, microbiology, botany, radiobiology, the effects of cosmic rays on organisms, the role of gravity in organogenesis and behaviour, bioengineering, the origin of life on earth, and whether life can exist in other parts of the universe.
As the introduction explains, this volume represents “an invitation to biological, medical, and behavioural investigators in Europe to participate in the planning and execution of experiments in the Spacelabs of the 1980s. These manned, earth-orbiting laboratories will offer a working environment which is biologically unique in its absence of effective gravity, a condition which cannot be produced on earth. Spacelab heralds a new era of opportunity for investigating problems of a fundamental nature, making possible a better understanding of life processes on earth”. -
...Research Opportunities offered by Spacelab. Invitation to European Investigators. Edited by Hilding Bjurstedt, First Chairman of ESA Life-Sciences Working group (1974-1977). Paris: European Space Agency, August 1979.
Tall quarto, 56 pages. Original yellow wrappers printed in black and white, stapled. Illustrations and diagrams throughout the text. With two copies of the original order form loosely inserted, one having been cut off at the halfway line for posting. Wrappers lightly rubbed and toned at the edges, with some mild spotting to the lower edge of the upper wrapper. Excellent condition.
(Gould, Stephen Jay) Mitchell, W. J. T. | The Last Dinosaur Book
£200.00
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First edition, first printing. Presentation copy inscribed by the author to palaeontologist Stephen Jay Gould on the front free endpaper, “For Steven [sic], This was written to you. Warm regards, Tim Mitchell”. Loosely inserted is a bookmark promoting Gould’s talk “Pattern and Lack of Progress in the History of Life”, the keynote lecture for Dinofest International 1996.
The Last Dinosaur Book was the first comprehensive, critical enquiry into the depiction of dinosaurs in popular culture, revealing “a cultural symbol whose plurality of meaning and often contradictory nature is emblematic of modern society itself”. Author W. J. T. Mitchell is a professor of English literature and art history at the University of Chicago. “A scholar and theorist of media, visual art, and literature, Mitchell is associated with the emergent fields of visual culture and iconology (the study of images across the media). He is known especially for his work on the relations of visual and verbal representations in the context of social and political issues” and is editor of the journal Critical Inquiry and the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship (University of Chicago biography).
Recipient Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002) was one of the leading evolutionary biologists of the 20th century. His theory of punctuated equilibria challenged the idea that evolution is a slow and constant accumulation of changes, pointing out that instead it often occurs in rapid bursts of speciation followed by periods of stasis. He was a prominent defender of teaching evolution in schools and a leading critic of the field of sociobiology, which he saw as providing a pseudoscientific basis for discrimination. But he was best known as a popular science writer, penning three hundred essays that were originally published in Natural History Magazine.
Gould is cited in the text several times, on the “archetypal fascination” of dinosaurs as “alluringly scary, but sufficiently safe” because of their extinction; on their commercialisation turning them from “sources of awe into clichés and commodities”; and on contemporary scientific disputes about dinosaur biology and evolution.
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...The Life and Times of a Cultural Icon. Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press, 1998.
Octavo. Original blue cloth, titles to spine in copper, blue endpapers. With the dust jacket. Colour illustrations throughout. Just a tiny spot of delamination at the lower edge of the jacket. An excellent, fresh copy.
(Gould, Stephen Jay) Wilford, John Noble | The Riddle of the Dinosaur
£250.00
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First edition, first printing. Presentation copy inscribed by the author on the half title, “To Stephen Jay Gould, Many thanks for the inspiration of your essays. Best wishes, John Noble Wilford”.
A lovely copy of this popular account of recent developments in dinosaur palaeontology, including the discoveries that they were likely warm-blooded and that a comet probably caused their extinction, by Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist John Noble Wilford (1933 - ). Wilford was responsible for the paper’s front-page story on the Apollo 11 Moon landing in 1969, and his by-line was the only one that appeared on the front page that day. Stephen Dubner, co-author of Freakonomics, described one of the sentences in the Moon landing piece – describing Armstrong’ heart-rate during the descent to the surface – as “one of the most elegant little uses of data I can recall seeing in a news article” (Dubner, “When Data Tell the Story”, Freakonomics blog, July 21, 2009).
Recipient Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002) was one of the leading evolutionary biologists of the 20th century. His theory of punctuated equilibria challenged the idea that evolution is a slow and constant accumulation of changes, pointing out that instead it often occurs in rapid bursts of speciation followed by periods of stasis. He was a prominent defender of teaching evolution in schools and a leading critic of the field of sociobiology, which he saw as providing a pseudoscientific basis for discrimination. But he was best known as a popular science writer, penning three hundred essays that were originally published in Natural History Magazine. In 1991 Wilford reviewed Gould’s fifth essay collection, Bully for Brontosaurus, calling its contents “provocative and delightfully discursive”.
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...Drawings by Douglas Henderson. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985.
Quarto. Original grey boards, cream cloth backstrip, titles to spine and author’s name to upper board in gilt and copper. With the dust jacket. 6 colour plates, illustrations and charts within the text. An excellent copy in the jacket with just a couple of miniscule rubbed spots and faint toning along the upper edges.
(Hosking, Eric) Baker, J. A. | The Peregrine.
£650.00
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First edition, first impression of this masterpiece of 20th century nature writing, cited by Ted Hughes, Andrew Motion, Werner Herzog, and many others, as one of the most important works of its kind. Uncommon in such nice condition in the dust jacket. This copy from the library of eminent bird photographer Eric J. Hosking, with his owl bookplate.
Author J. A. Baker (1926-1987) was a librarian who spent ten years tracking peregrine falcons in coastal Essex during the 1950s and 60s. This, the first of his two published works, distils his observations of the birds and their changing habitat into a lyrical account of a single year, beginning in autumn with the birds’ migration from Scandinavia and ending with their return north in spring.
Born in 1909, Eric Hosking developed his love for nature and photography at an early age. He received a Kodak Box Brownie at age eight, and graduated to a plate camera by age ten, using it to photograph birds. He lost his job in car sales at the beginning of the Great Depression, but an opportunity arose when the Sunday Dispatch asked him to get a shot of an elephant seal at the London Zoo. For several years he supplemented his income by photographing weddings and children (including the young princesses for Country Life in 1935), but by 1937 he was a full-time nature photographer, the first person in Britain to make their living in this field.
Hosking was intrepid in his pursuit of wild birds. He designed his own hides and made a number of important technical advances, among them the use of the flash in nature photography. His most famous photo is the “technically perfect” shot of a barn owl carrying prey that he captured using an electronic flash in 1948 (Sage, “A Photographer in Hiding”, New Scientist, September 1979). He is widely credited with developing wildlife photography into a mature artform.
During his sixty-year career Hosking’s photographs were published thousands of times around the world. He authored thirteen books, including the autobiography An Eye for a Bird, and he lectured, wrote for popular periodicals, and appeared on television. Hosking was president of the Nature Photographic Society and served as vice-president of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and the British Ornithologists’ Union. He was awarded the RSPB’s Gold Medal in 1974, and three years later received an OBE.
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London: Collins, 1967.
Octavo. Original black boards, titles to spine gilt. With the dust jacket. Bookplate of Eric J. Hosking. Tail of spine a little bumped, lightly rubbed at the edges. An excellent copy in the jacket that is also a little faded on the spine panel and edges, and lightly rubbed at the extremities.
(Landsberg, Peter) Hawking, Stephen W. | A Brief History of Time
£350.00
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First edition, the corrected second printing of this landmark popular work on the quest for the Grand Unified Theory. From the library of physicist Peter Landsberg, with his ownership signature, notes and highlighting, and letter to him loosely inserted.
Peter Landsberg (1922-2010), was a German Jewish refugee to Britain who earned his PhD in quantum mechanics at Imperial College London in 1949 and joined the faculties of the Universities of Cardiff and Southampton. “Landsberg was not solely interested in one branch of physics, he was interested in physics in general and this boyish enthusiasm took his research to all areas of theoretical work”, among them the quantum phenomenon known as bose condensation, the relationship between quantum mechanics and living things, thermodynamics, cosmology, and applications of solar energy. He is best known for his explication of “Landsberg efficiency”, the theoretical limits on how much solar power can be converted to electricity in a given situation (obituary in The Scotsman, May 23, 2010).
Landsberg has made numerous short notes — often page number references — and underlined a number of passages, primarily in chapters 8: The Origin and Fate of the Universe and 9: The Arrow of Time, that deal with thermodynamics and the inflationary model of the universe. Loosely inserted is a typed letter signed to Landsberg from Canon Robert Winnett (1910-1989), to whom the book had been loaned, and who writes that it conveyed to him “a sense of the infinite mystery of the universe, and of unplumbed depths still to be explored, an attitude which is surely akin to the religious”. He goes on the discuss how scientific ideas about the origin of the universe might align with Christianity and other religions, ending with the thought that “we are dealing with probabilities rather than certainties... The origins of religion lie in dimensions of human experience other than the scientific, and any cosmological theory can be interpreted theistically, or if we will, atheistically”.
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...From the Big Bang to Black Holes. Introduction by Carl Sagan. Illustrations by Ron Miller. New York: Bantam Books, 1988.
Octavo. Original black quarter cloth, dark grey boards, title to spine in silver, Hawking’s monogram to upper board in blind. With the dust jacket. Illustrations throughout the text. Binding a little rubbed and bumped. A very good copy in the rubbed and creased jacket with some bubbling of the plastic coating, especially along folds.
(Mathematics) | Georgian era arithmetic workbook
£350.00
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A substantial early-19th century arithmetic workbook with several calligraphic headings featuring animals in the designs, in coloured ink.
The contents of this workbook comprise lessons and exercises in advanced arithmetic, primarily multiplication, division, and the conversion of quantities. The contents are strongly mercantile in flavour, featuring problems such as “In 552 common pounds of silk how many great pounds”; “If I give 1£ 1s 8d for 3 lbs of coffee what must be given for 29 lbs & 1 oz”; and “What is the half years rent of 547 acres of land at 15s 6d per acre per anum”.
The manuscript also features occasional overwriting in a different hand, with some entries dated 1820. These seem to be records of sales of wood and articles fashioned from it.
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England, c. 1800-1820.
84-leaf purpose-made blank book (200 x 165 mm). Original tan half skiver, waste paper marbled boards. Manuscript equations, notes, and calligraphic illustrations in coloured ink filling all 168 pages. Overwriting in a separate hand, dated 1820, on some pages. Spine rolled, boards worn, occasional smudges and spots to contents. Very good condition.
(Maxwell, James Clerk) Goldman, Martin | The Demon in the Aether
Sold Out
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First edition, first impression of this biography of physicist James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879).
Maxwell was the first scientist to describe electricity, light, and magnetism as different manifestations of the same phenomenon, and to demonstrate that light and magnetic fields travel through space as waves. His equations for electromagnetism are considered the second great unification of physics, Newton’s laws having been the first, and they laid the groundwork for special relativity and quantum mechanics.
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...The Story of James Clerk Maxwell. Edinburgh: Paul Harris Publishing in association with Adam Hilger Ltd, 1983.
Octavo. Original black boards, titles to spine gilt. With the dust jacket. 6 double-sided plates. Very slightly rubbed at the extremities. An excellent copy in the price-clipped and lightly rubbed jacket with some fading of the spine panel and adjacent portions of the other panels.
(Ratcliffe, Derek) Howard, H. Eliot | Territory in Bird Life.
£100.00
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First edition, first impression of the book that popularised the modern understanding of territoriality among male birds. From the library of the important conservationist Derek Ratcliffe (1929-2005), who discovered the effect of DDT-related eggshell thinning on peregrine falcon populations. With his ownership inscription on the front free endpaper, dated 24 July, 1964.
Author H. Elliot Howard (1873-1940) was an amateur ornithologist whose study of warblers led him to the conclusion that male birds fight not for females, but directly for territory, which then attracts females. This was first explicated in The British Warblers: a History with Problems of Their Lives (published in parts between 1907 and 14). The lavishly illustrated work was well-reviewed, but too expensive for a general readership, so Howard published Territory in Bird Life in 1920. This popular work explores all aspects of territory among many different species, and “from the late 1920s the theory became increasingly influential both in Europe and the United States” (Online Dictionary of National Biography).
“Howard was not, in fact, the first person to discover territory in birds for, unknown to him, J. B. Altum in 1868 in Germany and C. B. Moffat in 1903 in Ireland had described its main features. However, it was Howard's persuasive and extensive exposition of the concept that established its importance and brought it to international ornithological notice; it is a striking example of an amateur significantly influencing modern scientific research” (ODNB).
This former owner of this copy was Derek Ratcliffe, one of the most influential British conservationists of the 20th century. Ratcliffe was educated as a botanist, completing his PhD at Bangor in 1953, and then being appointed a scientific officer for the Nature Conservancy in Edinburgh. He made important surveys of plant and bird communities in the Scottish Highlands, many of which had never been studied in detail. During 1961-62 he completed the first survey of British peregrine falcons, discovering that they were declining in numbers and even ceasing to breed at all in some areas. "The cause of the decline was persistent pesticides, notably DDT, which caused eggshell thinning and catastrophic breeding failure. Ratcliffe published a classic paper on eggshell thinning in the journal Nature in 1967, and a more detailed paper in the Journal of Applied Ecology in 1970, both of which were among the most frequently cited ornithological scientific publications" (ODNB).
In the 1960s and 70s, as scientific assessor for the Nature Conservancy, he led efforts to inventory Britain’s most important natural sites. “At the heart of this work was the exposition of a philosophy for nature conservation founded on the use of such concepts as 'diversity', 'fragility', and 'naturalness', which enabled scientists systematically to compare sites and even regions. This became, and remained, the cornerstone of nature conservation, culminating in the publication of the two-volume book edited by Ratcliffe, A Nature Conservation Review (1977)” (ODNB). During the 1980s he led the movement to establish sites of special scientific interest throughout Britain, and was a key player in the drive to prevent industrial scale pine tree planting on the critically important flow country habitat in northern Scotland.
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...With Illustrations by G. E. Lodge and H. Grönvold. London: John Murray, 1920.
Octavo. Original blue cloth, titles to spine gilt. Colour frontispiece and 10 black and white plates with tissue guards, double-page map. Errata slip at page 238, single leaf of publisher’s ads at rear. Binding lightly rubbed at the extremities, faint spotting to the edges of the text block, free endpapers partially tanned. An excellent copy.
(Stopes, Marie C.) Eaton, Peter & Marilyn Warnick | Marie Stopes. A Checklist of Her Writings.
£35.00
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First edition, first impression of the key bibliography of Stopes’ phenomenal literary output, encompassing not only her family planning and scientific publications, but also poetry, plays, translations and travel writing, fairy tales, and her only novel.
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London: Croom Helm, 1977.
Octavo. Original black boards, titles to spine gilt. With the dust jacket. An excellent copy in the lightly rubbed an toned jacket with a few small marks and spots.
(Zallinger, Rudolph) Ostrom, John H. & Theodore Delevoryas | A Guide to the Rudolph Zallinger Mural The Age of Reptiles
£35.00
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Reissue of this illustrated visitor’s guide to the magisterial Age of Reptiles mural in the Great Hall of Yale’s Peabody Museum, written by John Ostrom, one of the most important palaeontologists of the 20th century. Originally published in 1966 in the same pamphlet form. A beautiful copy in unusually nice condition.
“The Age of Reptiles mural is an artistic masterpiece and was, for its time, perhaps the most scientifically accurate representation of the Mesozoic world ever created” (Black, “Creating the Age of Reptiles”, Smithsonian Magazine, January 3, 2012). The 110-foot-long, 16-foot-high mural was completed between 1943 and 1947 by art student Rudolph Zallinger (1919-1995), who had previously been employed at the museum painting seaweed specimens. Museum director Albert Parr had initially envisioned the space broken into panels illustrating individual species, but Zallinger developed the idea for a “sweep through time” from the Devonian period to the Cretaceous, “more than three million years of earth history” (introduction to the present).
“With the format established, Zallinger was rapidly schooled in vertebrate paleontology, paleobotany and anatomy by the museum’s experts. The animals had to be scientifically accurate, their environments appropriately stocked with plants from the right era, and the whole fossil cast had to fit together in an aesthetically pleasing style. Accuracy was of extreme importance, but so was making the painting visually appealing to visitors... The artist also faced the technical decision of how to execute the mural. Zallinger decided on a fresco secco, a classic method in which pigments are combined with egg and water and are painted on dried plaster that is moistened at the time of application. As Zallinger composed each successive rendition of the mural, the space he was going to paint on was prepared and covered in plaster. What is remarkable is how early Zallinger arrived at what became the final layout for his Mesozoic panorama. While the fine details of the plants and animals changed with each ever-more-detailed version, their general shapes and poses were established by the time Zallinger created a 1943 ‘cartoon’ version of the mural on rag paper” (Black).
The mural is one of the largest paintings in the world, and earned its creator a Pulitzer Fellowship in Art in 1949. It was highly influential in both paleontological art and in popular culture during the mid-century. A number of guides to the mural have been published over the years, including this one by John H. Ostrom (1928 - 2005). Ostrom was a Yale professor, director of the Peabody Museum, and “the most influential palaeontologist of the second half of the 20th century” (Dodson & Gingerich, “John H. Ostrom”, American Journal of Science, volume 306, number 1, January 2006). He discovered that dinosaurs had the metabolisms and agility of mammals and birds, and that they were closely related to modern birds, leading to the “dinosaur renaissance” of the second half of the century.
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...in the Peabody Museum, Yale University. Discovery Supplement Number 1. New Haven, CT: Peabody Museum of Natural History, Yale University, 1966.
38-page pamphlet, wire-stitched. Original green wrappers printed in black. Folding plate depicting the mural and “Earth Clock”. Pencilled number to the edge of the upper wrapper. A fine copy.
19th-Century Chinese Pharmacy Sign
£450.00
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An attractive mid-19th century Chinese pharmacy sign advertising deer musk and turtle-based medications. The wooden sign is carved and lacquered in red and black, and features the original, decorative iron handle.
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China, [circa 1850].
Carved wooden hanging sign (67 x 16 cm). Lacquered and with the original decorative iron handle. Some wear, particularly at the ends and sides, and peeling of the lacquer across the face, some rusting of the iron handle which is still strong.
Abercrombie, John | Culture and Discipline of the Mind
£45.00
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The title page states that this is the fifth edition, however, we have been unable to trace any earlier editions in the usual institutional catalogues.
This small book on moral intelligence contains the ownership inscription of a young woman, Anne Elizabeth Le Mesurier, most likely the same Anne Elizabeth who genealogical records indicate was born to Thomas and Margaret Le Mesurier in 1814. Books on morality were an important part of the education of most middle and upper-class young people during the 19th-century. This text, however, seems directed more towards boys and men, with a focus on mental and emotional discipline, intellectual life, and masculine character development rather than virtues then considered feminine, such as modesty and care-giving. It is therefore interesting to see that it was first owned by a woman (she has dated her ownership inscription in the year of publication), and it would be interesting to compare it to other didactic and moral books known to have been owned by women during this period.
The text itself was written by Edinburgh's leading physician, John Abercrombie (1780-1844). "His meticulous case records were to form the basis for two important books published in 1828, both of which received wide acclaim.... His abilities were recognised by his appointment by King George IV as physician in ordinary to the King in Scotland, the first such appointment. The University of Oxford conferred on him the award of the honorary degree of MD. The prestige of this honour can be judged by the fact that the only other recipient in the previous 50 years was Dr Edward Jenner of vaccination fame" (Notable Fellows of the College of Physicians of Edinburgh profile). Abercrombie was also a noted philanthropist and the author of a number of other philosophical and religious works.
- Addressed to the Young. Fifth Edition. Edinburgh: William Whyte and Co., 1837. Octavo. Original red cloth, titles to spine gilt. Contemporary ownership inscription to front pastedown. Cloth partially faded and a little rubbed, with small worn spots at the ends of the spine and corners, just a little light spotting to contents. A very good copy.
Adams, D. R. | Practical Aircraft Stress Analysis
Sold Out
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First edition, first impression of this uncommon book, written “with the object of providing a simple and practical study of the methods used in the stress analysis of aircraft components”. The text is based on lectures delivered by the author at the de Havilland Aeronautical Technical School, and “advanced knowledge of statics, mechanics and aerodynamics is not required” (preface).
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London: Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, Ltd., 1936.
Octavo. Original blue cloth, titles to spine and upper board in black. 3 folding charts, diagrams throughout the text. 4-page integral publisher’s ads plus another 16-page set of ads. Spine rolled, a light spotting to the endpapers and edges of the text block but contents clean, a little creasing to the upper corners of pages 109 through 118, faint musty smell. A very good copy.
Aikin, John | The Calendar of Nature
£350.00
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Third edition of this charming little book on the changing of the seasons from month to month by the “physician and man of letters” John Aiken (1747-1822) (Hahn, The Oxford Companion to Children’s Literature).
Aiken charming combines practical knowledge of nature and gardening with literary references. For April he writes: “This month gives the most perfect image of Spring; for its vicissitudes of warm gleams of sunshine, and gentle showers, have the most wonderful effects in hastening that universal springing of the vegetable tribes, from whence the season derives its appellation. April generally begins with raw unpleasant weather, the influence of the equinoctial storms still in some degree prevailing, Its opening is thus described in a poem of Mr. Warton’s: ‘Mindful of disaster past, And thinking of the northern blast, The fleety storm returning still, The morning hoar; the evening chill; Reluctant comes the timid Spring...’ Early in the month, that welcome guest and harbinger of Summer, the swallow, returns. The kind first seen, is the chimney, or house, swallow, known by its long forked tail, and red breast. At first, here and there, only one appears, glancing quick by us, as if scarcely able to endure the cold. ‘The swallow for a moment seen, Skims in haste the village green’.”
A very nice copy in an attractive contemporary tree calf binding. With the ownership inscription and notes of a woman, Eliza Davenport, who obtained this copy in 1810. Davenport’s short pencilled notes at the rear of the volume relate to a handful of observations of flowering plants and other phenomena.
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...Designed for the Instruction and Entertainment of Young Persons. The Third Edition. London: Joseph Johnson, 1787.
Duodecimo (155 x 95mm). Contemporary tree calf, spine gilt in compartments, marbled endpapers. 1810 ownership inscription to the verso of the front free endpaper, pencilled notes of a similar date to the verso of the rear blank. Binding lightly rubbed at the extremities, the corner of B6 torn, not affecting the text, light spotting to the contents. Very good condition.
Applin, Esther Richards, Alva E. Ellisor & Hedwig T. Kniker | "Subsurface Stratigraphy of the Coastal Plain of Texas and Louisiana"
£45.00
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Offprint of the paper proving that microfossils could be used to date the layers of the Earth’s crust, a key insight of modern geology.
Author Esther Richards Applin (1895-1972) was an petroleum geologist at the Rio Bravo Oil Company. “In a paper presented at a Geological Society meeting in 1921 by her supervisor at Rio Bravo, Applin suggested that microfossils could be used to date strata. She was ridiculed by more experienced geologists for her audacity... To verify her claim, Applin worked with Alva Ellisor and Hedwig Kniker to find ways to separate the fossils from the matrix of the cuttings. In 1925, the three coauthored a paper that detailed the sequences and oil-bearing zones in the Gulf Coast using microfossils” (Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science p. 46).
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...reprinted for private circulation from Bulletin of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, Vol. 9, No. 1, January-February 1925. [Tulsa, OK]: American Association of Petroleum Geologists, 1925.
44 page offprint. Original tan wrappers printed in black. 1 plate, 1 illustration within the text. Library ticket to the base of the spine and both wrappers, sticker, security label, and “discard” ink stamp to rear blank, security sticker to the final page of the text, library ink stamp to the title. Some pencilled notes to the upper wrapper and title. Corners and gutter creased, minor creasing of the upper wrapper from the top left to the lower right. Good condition.
Augusta, Joseph, Greta Hort, & Zdeněk Burian | Prehistoric Animals
£250.00
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First English language edition, first impression of this vibrantly illustrated work, originally published in Prague under the title Tiere der Urzeit in the same year. Rare in the dust jacket in such nice condition.
Between the 1930s and 1960s “the foremost painter of dinosaur restorations was Zdeněk Burian (1905-1981). His canvasses were used to illustrate a number of popular books on prehistoric life by Joseph Augusta, and in the late 1950s and 1960s these were translated into English and widely circulated. So the Burian illustrations offered an alternative to those of Zallinger [responsible for the Peabody Museum mural], or of the late Charles Knight. But there was not much of a difference. Apatosaurus and Diplodocus stand quietly by their respective swamps, accompanied by partially submerged relatives. A T. rex besets a pair of Trachodon, but none of the three lifts a leg off the ground, or even seems to be moving at all” (Ashworth, Paper Dinosaurs 48). Though his dinosaurs are no longer considered anatomically accurate, Burian was highly respected in his time and his paintings were widely reproduced and copied, often without acknowledgement. In 2017 the first dinosaur discovered in the Czech Republic was named in his and Augusta’s honour, Burianosaurus augustai.
The author of the text, Joseph Augusta (1903-1968) was a palaeontologist at Charles University in Prague between 1933 and 1968, and is best known for his role as a science populariser. He published around twenty books on science for the general public and served as an advisor to the hit 1955 film Journey to the Beginning of Time (Cesta do Pravěku), which combined human actors with stop-motion special effects.
The translator of the book, Greta Hort (1903-1967), was born in Copenhagen, the daughter of Vilhelm Hjort, astronomer royal. She earned her PhD at Newnham College, Cambridge and then became a research fellow at Girton College, publishing on mysticism and religious thought. In 1938 Hort was appointed principal of University Women's College (later University College) at the University of Melbourne. She was later made chair of English literature at Aarhus University, Denmark (Australian Dictionary of Biography).
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...Illustrated under the direction of the author by Zdeněk Burian. Translated by Dr. Greta Hort. London: Spring Books, [1956].
Folio. Original buff, heavy-grain cloth, titles to spine and Stegosaurus design to upper board in brown. With the dust jacket. 60 lithographic plates of which 31 are in colour. Lower corner of the binding knocked, which has also slightly creased the corner of the text block and the jacket, spine rolled. A very good copy in the bright jacket that is lightly rubbed at the extremities with a few nicks and short closed splits.
Babcock & Wilcox Co. | Dampf. Dessen Erzeugung und Verwendung nebst katalog der Fabrikate
£150.00
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“Steam, Its Production and Use, together with a Catalogue of Manufactures”. A very attractive 1893 German language catalogue of the pioneering power firm Babcock & Wilcox, the first edition of which was published in 1875.
This 180-page catalogue is heavily illustrated with both photos and engravings. In addition to specifications for the firm’s boiler models, it includes a detailed overview of steam power and the operations of different types of boilers, as well as information about the company and a complete list of the boilers they have already installed. Loosely inserted is a single leaf advert for the Babcock & Wilcox boiler “with Colonial Furnace, suitable for burning green bagasse”, and three charming, pictorial advertising flyers for equipment produced by the Bopp & Reuther firm of Mannheim, Germany.
Babcock & Wilcox was founded as a manufacturer of industrial steam boilers in Providence, Rhode Island in 1867, and has remained a leader in power generation to the present day. Among their many achievements have been: the supply of a boiler for Edison’s Menlo Park laboratory in 1878; the powering of America’s first electricity-producing central generating station in Philadelphis in 1881; supplying the equipment for Edison’s Pearl Street Station in New York City, the worlds first public electrical utility, which opened in 1882 (Edison would later write that Babcock & Wilcox manufactured “the best boiler God has permitted man yet to make”); the supply of boilers to power US and British naval vessels in the 1890s; the production of electricity for New York’s first subway; the construction of the water pipe system at the Hoover Dam; and the supply of weapons components for the Manhattan Project and equipment for the world’s first nuclear-powered sub, the USS Nautilus.
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...der Babcock & Wilcox Co. 30 Cortlandt Street, New York und von Babcock & Wilcox, Limited 114 Newgare Street, London. New York & London: Babcock & Wilcox, March, 1893.
Tall quarto. Original brown cloth blocked in gilt and blind, all edges red, floral patterned endpapers. Lithographic half title. Engravings and illustrations from photos throughout. Ownership ink stamp of Edmund Prechtel to front pastedown and title, ownership signature of the same to the front blank. Cloth a little rubbed and spotted with some scattered loss of size, small tear at the base of the spine panel, contents faintly toned. Excellent condition.
Bacon, Gertrude | Memories of Land and Sky
£350.00
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First edition of the memoirs of the first Englishwoman to fly. Inscribed by the author, using her married name, on the title page, “(Gertrude Foggitt) – Sept. 1936”.
Gertrude Bacon (1874-1949) was the daughter of the scientist and balloonist Rev. John Maczenzie Bacon, and she accompanied him on most of his expeditions. "Bacon became fascinated by flying and as a journalist reported on the various airships and planes being built." In August 1904 she became the first woman to fly in an airship, being a passenger in the near-disastrous first flight of an 84-foot-long ship designed by Stanley Spencer. "From 22 to 29 August, 1909, the world's first aviation meeting was held at Rheims, France. Bacon was determined to go for a ride in one of the new machines. On the last day she was taken up in a Farman plane, squeezed between the radiator and the pilot. She described the takeoff: 'The motion was wonderfully smooth - smoother yet - and then - ! Suddenly there had come into it a new indescribable quality - a lift - a lightness - a life!' Thus she became the first Englishwoman to fly" (International Women in Science: A Biographical Dictionary, p. 15). Bacon flew on several other occasions, and became the first ever hydroplane passenger at Lake Windermere in 1912. Bacon became Gertrude Foggitt in 1929, when she married fellow botanist and chemist Thomas Jackson Foggitt.
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...With Twenty-Four Illustrations. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1928.
Octavo. Original blue cloth, titles to spine gilt and to upper board in blind. 8-page publisher’s ads at rear. Portrait frontispiece and 15 plates from black and white photographs. Spine cocked, cloth a little rubbed at the extremities, two shallow dents in the upper board, lower corner bumped, some spotting to the contents, particularly the early leaves, and edges of the text block. Very good condition.
Baxter, James Finney | Scientists Against Time
£350.00
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First edition, first printing of the Pulitzer Prize-winning account of Allied technological development during the Second World War. Inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, “To Betty Way Brown, with best wishes, James P. Baxter 3rd”.
Author James F. Baxter (1893-1975) was a historian and for more than twenty years the popular president of Williams College in Massachusetts. During the Second World War he served as research coordinator of information (1941-1943) and director of the Office of Strategic Services (1942-1943), and the work for this book was undertaken during the latter part of the war while he served as the historical researcher for the Office of Scientific Research and Development. It includes chapters on submarine and air warfare, radar and LORAN, rocketry, proximity fuses, fire control technologies, new explosives and propellants, antimalarials, blood transfusion, penicillin, aviation medicine, and the Manhattan Project, among others.
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...With Illustrations. An Atlantic Monthly Press Book. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1946.
Octavo. Original grey cloth, titles and design to spine and upper board blocked in red and blue, top edge dyed red. Frontispiece and 33 double-sided plates from photographs, 3 illustrations within the text. Spine toned, cloth slightly rubbed, endpapers tanned, light spotting to the edges of the text block and occasionally to the contents.
Bigelow, Frank H. | Balloon Ascensions
£750.00
- A substantial, 196-page manuscript of measurements obtained during meterological balloon flights in South America, Europe, Africa, and the United States between 1906 and 1911 (the title gives a date range of 1911-1913, but there do not seem to be any entries after 1911).
The compiler of this manuscript, meteorologist and astronomer Frank H. Bigelow (1851-1924), grew up in Concord, Massachusetts and was educated at the Episcopal Theological School in nearby Cambridge. During the 1870s and 80s he served two stints as assistant astronomer at the Argentine National Observatory at Cordoba, where many of these measurements were made, and also worked as a professor of mathematics at Racine College, as assistant in the National Almanac Office in Washington D. C., and as a professor of meteorology at the National Weather Bureau.
Neatly written on graph paper, each entry in this manuscript is laid out as a grid with the columns headed by elevations. The rows are labelled with a variety of mathematical formula that often relate to each other as they descend the page, “T₁ - T₀” followed by “log T₁ - T₀”, or “T” followed by “log T” then “Log T₁ - T₀” and “Log (Log T₁ - T₀)”. There are also rows where work is presumably checked (check) and various rows are added together (summ). Unfortunately, we cannot locate a guide to the symbols used here, making it difficult to determine exactly what Bigelow was studying. Prose notes occasionally appear, however, and seem to indicate that his measurements were connected with heat and possibly solar activity. “Since z increases upwards the (-) sign indicates loss of heat energy from level to level outwards... The evidence is strongly against the theory that absorption is proportional to the density or path length...” “The assumed (E₁ - E₀) solar near surface seems to require special modification because the p values are impossible...”.
As well as meteorology, Bigelow studied the solar corona, aurora, and terrestrial magnetism, and it may be in pursuit of these subjects that the present ascensions were made. It is also unclear whether Bigelow or a colleague actually went up in the balloons, or whether they were uncrewed weather balloons which had first been used in the late 1890s by the French meteorologist Léon Teisserenc de Bort. We suspect the former, as results are given for multiple elevations during each flight. Unusually, within the manuscript the flights are bound entirely out of date order, and it’s unclear whether this was an accident or a way to highlight or connect certain results. This manuscript would benefit from attention by an informed cataloguer or scholar, in connection with similar materials....Cordoba - Argentina 1911 - 1913. Europe and United States. 1906-1911.
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Folio (352 x 215 mm), single leaves oversewn in sections onto sawn-in cords. 196 page manuscript in black and red ink and pencil, rectos only. Leaves numbered in blue crayon. Contemporary quarter black skiver, black pebble-grain cloth, titles to spine gilt, marbled endpapers, graph paper leaves. Spine professionally relined and reattached to text block by Bainbridge Conservation, binding rubbed and worn, particularly along the spine, endpapers and blanks tanned, contents a little toned, a few contemporary ink blotches. Very good condition.
Boltson, Howard | 19 Meticulous Birding Notebooks kept during the 1980s and early 1990s.
£3,750.00
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An exceptional set of notebooks recording the observations of an Audubon Master Birder between 1985 and 1992, primarily on Long Island, but also including trips within the US and Caribbean. Natural history records of such depth and specificity are extremely rare, and this set has fantastic potential for research into a wide range of topics, from the impact of climate change to the social history of birding and citizen science. While it is unfortunate that notebooks one through five, and eleven, are lacking, this is still a very significant and nearly complete set of material covering almost a decade.
The compiler of these records, Howard Boltson, lived in East Northport, near Huntington on Long Island, and was heavily involved with local and national ornithology groups. A member of the Huntington Audubon Society, he had completed the organisation’s rigourous, multi-week Master Birder course and was a regular volunteer, including as a field trip leader. He participated in Project Birdwatch, an initiative of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the Federation of New York State Bird Clubs. Begun in 1986, the project’s goal was to identify and describe seasonal patterns of bird distribution by combining data from the weekly reports of experienced observers (”How to Join Project Birdwatch” in Feathers, the newsletter of the Hudson-Mohawk Bird Club, winter 1986). He also regularly submitted reports of rare bird sightings to the New York State Avian Records Committee, and his photos were published at least twice in the Journal of the North American Bluebird Society (the spring and winter 2003 issues). Boltson was featured in the local press several times, including for an article about swans in which he is introduced as “the bird man of Huntington” (Ketcham, “On the Swan Trail”, Long Island Journal, January 28th, 1996).
Boltson’s notebooks are meticulous records of his bird watching. Each session is given a date and location (sometimes accompanied by hand-drawn maps), and notes are made about the weather and other conditions. Boltson then lists all the individual birds spotted, including their sex when the species is dimorphic, and he records details of those he can’t immediately identify, sometimes adding drawings to assist his memory. Activities that he witnessed, such as nesting and feeding, are included, as are bird calls. Other animals, in one case a turtle, make appearances. Most of the entries are written in black ink with special notes in red, such as his early retirement in 1986 (”First day of retirement - N. Y. Life - good luck to me!”), the “red letter day” in his feeder notebook when a black-capped chickadee eats from his hand for the first time, as well as his concerned report of a new heat record in notebook 18. Red ink is also used to mark the birds he adds to his life list, returning later to write their list number around the earlier text where he identified them. Totals are given for the number of species seen per month and cumulatively, with separate totals for life list additions. Boltson also records organised activities, such as field trips and lectures he either attended or led, usually tallying his expenses and gas mileage, and including the names and phone numbers of participants. A quantity of related material such as coupons, receipts, flyers, news clippings, and recording forms are loosely inserted. While the majority of Bolston’s birdwatching was done locally at sites such as Jamaica Bay and Sunken Meadow on Long Island, he sometimes travelled further, including to upstate New York, New Jersey, New Hampshire, Washington D. C., Miami and the Everglades, and the Bahamas. The feeder notebook records activities at his home between November 1986 and February 1993, including the types and amounts of bird food he was putting out, the birds who appeared, and their behaviours.
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East Northport, NY, 1985-1993.
19 spiral-bound pocket notebooks, each approximately 120 pages, with card covers (approximately 160 x 110 mm), completely filled with extensive manuscript notes in black, and occasionally red, ink. All but one of the notebooks are numbered (6 through 24) and each is labelled on the cover with the month and year that it was begun and ended. The other is labelled “Feeder Notes, East Northport L. I. N. Y., Nov 1986 - Feb 1993”. Inside each of the covers Boltson has written his name, address, phone number, and current roles in birding organisations. The brands of the notebooks are Pen-Tab, Jericho, Diamond Supply Company, and CVS. Most of the contents are manuscript text, but there are frequent drawings and sometimes loosely inserted material. Notebook 11 (September 1987-March 1988) is lacking, and presumably there were also notebooks numbered 1-5 that are not included here. There is light wear to the edges of the notebooks, especially around the upper corners. Excellent condition.
Bonnevie, Kristine | "Chromosomenstudien III
£250.00
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Offprint, presentation copy inscribed by the author on the upper wrapper, “Schrader, with kind regards of the author”.
Cell biologist Kristine Bonnevie (1872-1949) was Norway’s first female professor and the first woman member of the Norwegian Academy of Sciences. She studied with chromosome researcher Theodor Boveri in Germany, and was awarded a PhD in 1906 for her study of sex cells. “The problem of chromosome halving in the sex cells was not well understood at the time, and her work challenged the classic work of the Norwegian cytologists Alette and Kristian Emil Schreiner. In response to criticism by the Schreiners about her chromosomal work, Bonnevie went to Columbia University where she worked on sex chromosomes in the sea snake, under E. B. Wilson, verifying her earlier work... In 1908, she extended her work to non-dividing chromosomes in related organisms. She continued work on mitosis even after she gave up other work in cytology (Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science).” On Bonnevie’s return to Norway she became a professor of zoology at the University of Oslo (then Christiana) and did significant work on human genetic diseases and fingerprint patterns. “By 1949, almost every Norwegian cytologist had been trained by her” (BDWS). Bonnevie received a number of awards for her social and political work, including being made St. Olaf knight, First Class, for organising deliveries of food to the Norwegian resistance during the Second World War.
The subject of this paper is the maturation of chromatin in the chromosomes of the common onion, chromatin being the cellular material that packages the usually-loose DNA into dense chromosomes in preparation for cell division. The recipient is uncertain, but may have been the prominent chromosome researcher Franz Schrader (1891-1962) or his wife, Sally, also a cytologist in her own right (1895-1984). Franz Schrader was a generation younger than Bonnevie, but it’s possible that this offprint was sent to him sometime after publication, perhaps as part of correspondence between the two scientists. Schrader was certainly well aware of Bonnevie’s work, and in 1935 cited her in the first paragraph of his paper “Notes on the Mitotic Behaviour of Long Chromosomes” in the journal Cytologia.
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...Chromatinreifung in Allium cepa. Mit 4 Tafeln." Offprint from The Archiv for Zellforschung volume 6, number 2.
Leipzig: Wilhelm Engelmann, 1911.
Octavo. Original grey wrappers printed in black. 4 plates of which 1 is folding and the others are double-page. Ownership signature “Ric” and short note on the upper wrapper. Wrappers a little toned at the extremities, lightly rubbed, lower corner bumped, contents faintly toned. A very good copy.
Bonnycastle, John | A student’s manuscript of mathematical problems from A Treatise on Plane and Spherical Trigonometry.
£1,500.00
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An elegant, substantial early-19th century manuscript containing practical mathematical and astronomical problems likely produced by a student of navigation.The majority of the text is from John Bonnycastle's A Treatise on Plane and Spherical Trigonometry, originally published in 1806. Bonnycastle was a respected mathematics teacher who tutored the children of the aristocracy and taught at the Royal Military Academy in Woolwich. A man of “considerable classical and general literary culture”, he was a great friend of Fuseli and also of Leigh Hunt, who included Bonnycastle in his book Lord Byron and Some of His Contemporaries.
“Bonnycastle was a prolific and successful writer of textbooks. Of his chief works, The Scholar's Guide to Arithmetic first appeared in 1780 and ran to an eighteenth edition in 1851… His Introduction to Astronomy (1786), intended as a popular introduction to astronomy rather than as an elementary treatise, was one of the best-selling books on the subject for many years… Besides elementary mathematical books, Bonnycastle was in early life a frequent contributor to the London Magazine. He also wrote the introduction to a translation (by T. O. Churchill) of Bossut's Histoire des mathématiques (1803) and a ‘chronological table of the most eminent mathematicians from the earliest times’ for the end of the book” (ODNB).
This manuscript, titled “Bonnycastle’s Trigonometry”, contains the practical portions of the text, including rules for solving different types of trigonometric problems (“cases”) and practice problems. The practice problems have been completed in full, including large, precise geometrical diagrams made with ruler and compass. Page numbers are given and the problems are dated, the first section having been completed on September 24th, 1813 with additions every few days until the final dated entry on March 31, 1814. The final, undated portion, about a quarter of the manuscript, comprises “Miscellaneous Astronomical Problems” from Andrew Mackay’s The Theory and Practice of Finding the Longitude at Sea or Land (first published in 1793, the second edition in 1801), an important work for which its author “received the thanks of the boards of longitude of England and France” (ODNB).
This manuscript’s focus on mathematical rules and practice problems (at the expense of the more theoretical, text-heavy portions), together with the fact that it was updated regularly between September and March, indicates that it was produced by an advanced student working through the book as part of a regular course of study. The script is elegant, clear, and controlled throughout, and pencilled guide rules indicate that the student took great pains to ensure the manuscript was attractive and readable, suggesting that it was evaluated as part of coursework rather than used as a notebook for producing rough calculations (indeed, some rough calculations are included on sheets of scrap paper loosely inserted). Mathematics of this type, focused on spherical trigonometry, astronomy, and navigational problems, would have been of interest primarily to mariners, and it seems reasonable to conclude that the student was attending a naval or military institution, or was perhaps under private tutelage with a naval career in mind. A beautiful example of a student’s efforts at practical mathematics for navigation at a time when Britain was the major power on the seas.
- ...as well as Andrew MacKay’s The Theory and Practice of Finding the Longitude at Sea or Land. 170 page manuscript. Contemporary half speckled sheep, marbled sides. Several contemporary sheets of manuscript with mathematical notations loosely inserted. Corners repaired, a little wear and some discolouration to boards, endpapers tanned, contents with the occasional light spot but overall quite clean. Very good condition.
Boole, Mary Everest | The Mathematical Psychology of Gatry and Boole
£175.00
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First edition, first printing.
Author Mary Everest Boole (1832-1916) was the daughter of a rector who encouraged her interest in mathematics. At eighteen the logician George Boole became her tutor, and she wrote later that it was his book on logic which made her fall in love with him. In 1855 they were married and moved to Cork, where he was teaching. George encouraged Mary “to attend his lectures and improve her knowledge of mathematics. He read his book on differential equations to her, altering it until the language was completely clear to her” (Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science).
Following George’s death, Mary became a matron at Queens College and developed an interested in mathematical education. “Her collected works, published after her death in 1931, reprinted interesting articles on mathematical education that include the idea that a child should construct mathematical table before he or she uses it, and emphasize the need for logical thinking” (BDWS). The present volume is “a detailed analysis of the philosophical writings of the French writer P. Gratry (whom George Boole had admired), comparing them with her husband’s mathematical concepts which she tried (not entirely successfully) to explain using simple geometric concepts. This book also tried to investigate what she termed ‘mathematical psychology’, the importance of logical thinking, and the nature of genius” (BDWS). -
...Translated from the Language of the Higher Calculus and into that of Elementary Geometry.
London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co. Ltd., 1897.
Octavo. Original brown cloth, titles to spine gilt, black coated endpapers. Lightly rubbed at the extremities, spine a little rolled and darkened with some minor wear at the ends, contents slightly toned. A very good copy.
Bowman, Martie | Calendar for 1936 depicting pilot Martie Bowman in her WACO INF biplane.
£450.00
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A remarkable piece of early aviation ephemera, this calendar was produced as a Christmas greeting by the early female aviator Marguerite (Martie) Bowman (1901-1985) and her husband Leslie, also a pilot. It depicts Bowman flying in her WACO INF biplane, registration number NC625Y, in formation with two others, and includes portraits of Bowman, her husband, and their daughter Larnie Bowman Allen. We have learned from one of the Bowmans’ grandchildren that Larnie joined the family profession, becoming a wing-walker at eight and soloing at twelve.
The Bowmans established an aviation business together and, during the 1920s, 30s and 40s, Martie Bowman ferried planes from factories and regularly participated in air races. She competed in the 1930 Women’s Dixie Air Derby from Washington D. C. to Chicago, and won the Women’s International Air Derby of 1934 and the two-day women’s championship Shell Trophy Cup at Long Beach, California. In her biography of fellow pilot Phoebie Omlie, Janann Sherman recounts that during the Dixie Derby Bowman selflessly assisted Omlie, who had an injury, by waking up each hour during the night to apply medicated drops to her eyes (Sherman, Walking on Air, p. 65).
The Bowman’s papers are held at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, and as of 2001 two of Martie Bowman’s planes were still registered as flight-worthy with the FAA.
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[Olympia, WA], 1935.
Silver gelatin composite photograph (250 x 200 mm) with small tear-off monthly calendar for 1936. Inscribed “Merry Christmas, The Bowmans”. A few minor nicks and spots at the edges. Excellent, unused condition.
Brazier, Mary A. B. | The Electrical Activity of the Nervous System
£150.00
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First edition, first impression. A beautiful copy and rare in such nice condition in the dust jacket.
Author Mary Brazier (1904-1995) was an internationally recognised neurophysiologist who also became a respected historian of science in later life. She was educated at Bedford College in London, and did important research on the nervous system, including electrical activity in thyroid disease, nerve injuries, “war neuroses”, and the effects of anaesthesia on the brain. Following the Second World War she worked with Norbert Weiner at MIT, where they developed an analog correlator to analyse EEG and other nerve potentials, then joined the Brain Research Institute at UCLA, where she continued pioneering the use of computers in neurology. “As editor of the important new journal in her field, she published an important bibliography of EEG publications ranging from 1875-1948... Her later work on the history of her field explored these early publications and extended back into the beginning of neurophysiology in the seventeenth century” (Ogilvie, pp. 174-175).
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...A Textbook for Students. London: Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, Ltd., 1951.
Octavo. Original green cloth, titles to spine and publisher’s roundel to upper board gilt. With the dust jacket. Diagrams, charts, and illustrations from photographs within the text. Ownership signature and ink stamp of Henry Guze on the front free endpaper. An excellent, fresh copy in the jacket that is very lightly rubbed with a few shallow scuffs affecting the upper panel.
Buckland, Frank T. | Fish Hatching
£75.00
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First edition. A lovely, fresh copy of this important early work on raising young salmon by the Victorian Era's leading authority on pisciculture.
The naturalist Francis Trevelyan Buckland (1826-1880) began his career as a military surgeon in London, where he "eagerly embraced every opportunity of examining curious specimens of natural history, and abnormal growths, describing his observations in his Curiosities of Natural History, begun in 1858". In 1856 he joined the staff of the Field newspaper, and in 1865 he founded his own journal, Land and Water, an ‘independent channel for diffusing knowledge of practical natural history, and fish and oyster culture’.
Buckland "applied himself to the many economic questions affecting the artificial supply of salmon, the length of the close season, the condition of different salmon rivers, and similar investigations, gradually becoming the highest authority on pisciculture. In February 1867... he was appointed inspector of salmon fisheries. No more congenial post could have been offered to him, and from then on he devoted all his energies not merely to the duties of his office, but to the study of every point connected with the history of the salmon, and endeavoured in every way to improve the condition of British fisheries and those employed in them. This involved frequent visits to the rivers and coasts of the country, when he was always a welcome guest among people of all classes" (ODNB).
This volume was originally presented as a lecture at the Royal Institution in April, 1863. Buckland wrote in the preface that it was "a record of the observations which I have made during my experiments in Fish Hatching carried out during the winter months". He also thanked "Professor Faraday for his kind attention" as well as "Professor Tyndall, who was good enough to exhibit the young fish alive under the electric lamp, thereby adding so much to the general interest which I was most pleased to hear was caused among those present on the night of the Lecture".
In May 1865 Buckland was appointed scientific referee to the South Kensington Museum (now the Science Museum), where he established a large collection related to pisciculture which formed the basis of the International Fisheries Exhibition of 1883 and was on display until the latter half of the 20th century. "In his lifetime Buckland was regarded as one of the most whimsical of naturalists and, with all its stories of his doings and escapades, his biography was published in popular fiction as a ‘good romance'" (ODNB). - London: Tinsley Brothers, 1863. Octavo. Original green pebble-grain cloth, titles to spine gilt, boards blocked in blind. Frontispiece. Contemporary ownership signature to front pastedown. Just a little rubbing at the extremities, minor spotting to edges of textblock. A fresh and attractive copy in excellent condition.
Burr, G. D. [George Dominicus] | Instructions in Practical Surveying, Topographical Plan Drawing, and Sketching Ground Without Instruments
£350.00
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Second edition with additions, first published in 1839. An attractively bound prize copy awarded by the Royal Military College at Sandhurst to Henry George White for “attention to, and progress in, military drawing”. With White’s later bookplate giving his rank as Major General.
Author George Dominicus Burr (d. 1855), was for forty years an esteemed professor of military surveying at the Royal Military College, and it is presumably he himself who presented this prize volume. The contents cover practical surveying and military drawing for students with no prior knowledge of the art, “confidently recommending to [them] a practice founded upon long experience, and certain in its results, within the limits we have assigned to it” (introduction).
The recipient, Major General Henry George White (1835 - 1906) “had a distinguished career in the British Army serving at the Crimean War (1854-56), in the Indian Mutiny (1858-59), in Cyprus (1878-79) and Bechanaland in South Africa in the 1880s” (Irish National Inventory of Architectural Heritage ).
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...With Plates and Woodcuts. Second Edition.
London: John Murray, 1847.
Octavo (183 x 115 mm). Contemporary prize binding of green morocco, spine gilt in compartments, title, single-line rules, elaborate crests to boards, acorn and oak leaf roll to turn-ins, and all edges gilt, marbled endpapers. 5 folding plates on tissue, diagrams within the text. Prize and ownership bookplates to the front endpapers. Binding lightly rubbed with a few mild scuffs and some light wear at the extremities, a little faint spotting to the folding plates. Very good condition.
Cadbury, Deborah | The Dinosaur Hunters
£45.00
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First edition, first impression of this well-received popular history of the discovery and scientific documentation of dinosaur fossils in Britain during the early 19th century, notable for its emphasis on the work of Mary Anning in addition to that of Gideon Mantell, William Buckland, and Richard Owen. Though Anning’s work as a fossil collector has been well-known to specialists and historians since the Victorian Era, this volume was an early part of the revival of popular interest in her life which began in 1999 at the 200th anniversary of her birth, and which has continued in recent years with novels and films, as well as an initiative to place a statue of her in Lyme Regis.
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...A Story of Scientific Rivalry and the Discovery of the Prehistoric World. London: Fourth Estate, 2000.
Octavo. Original brown boards, titles to spine gilt, green endpapers. With the dust jacket. Illustrations throughout the text. Very slight indentation at the head of spine and shallow bump tot edge of the upper board, light spotting to the top edge of the text block. An excellent copy with the jacket, of which the lower edges of the inner flaps are slightly curled from being in a jacket protector.
Carnap, Rudolf | The Unity of Science
£125.00
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First English language edition, first impression. Originally published as “Die physikalische Sprache als Universalsprache der Wissenschaft” in the journal Erkenntnis in 1932.
“Rudolf Carnap (1891–1970) was one of the best-known philosophers of the twentieth century. Notorious as one of the founders, and perhaps the leading philosophical representative, of the movement known as logical positivism or logical empiricism, he was one of the originators of the new field of philosophy of science and later a leading contributor to semantics and inductive logic” (Stanford Encyclopedia of Science).
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...Translated with an Introduction by M. Black. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. Ltd., 1934.
Small octavo. Original white paper boards, red cloth backstrip, title to upper board in red, printed paper label to spine. Short pencilled note to the rear free endpaper. Binding a little rubbed and scratched, spine faded, corners slightly bumped, a little spotting to contents. A very good copy.
Carrington, Richard Christopher | Observations of the Spots on the Sun
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First edition of Carrington’s landmark study of sunspots. Attractively bound in blue quarter morocco and uncommon in commerce, with only one copy in recent auction records (Christies 2009).
Carrington was one of the last of the great amateur scientists, using family wealth to build his observatory at Redhill in the early 1850s. It was while construction was underway that he studied the Royal Astronomical Society’s collection of sun drawings, and was “struck by the capricious way in which the subject had been taken up, and then laid aside... Like many others, Carrington had been impressed by Schwabe's remarkable series of 9000 observations... which had revealed a regular variation in the number of spots on a cycle of ten or eleven years. Carrington determined that, alongside nocturnal observations of the circumpolar stars, he would observe the sun by day... He and [his assistant] Simmons commenced this arduous double schedule in November 1853, planning to include the complete sunspot cycle, which would commence with the minimum which was expected in 1855” (ODNB). Over seven years Carrington and Simmons observed 5,290 sunspots, and the results published here “determined the positions of the sun’s axis with unprecedented accuracy and established the important empirical laws of sunspot distribution and the variation in solar rotation as functions of the heliocentric latitude, which served to revolutionize ideas of solar physics just as effectively as the results of spectrum analysis” (Norman Library of Science and Medicine 407).
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...from November 9, 1853, to March 24, 1861, made at Redhill. Illustrated by 166 Plates. London & Edinburgh: Williams & Norgate, 1863.
Quarto (380 x 239 mm). Late 19th or early-20th century blue quarter morocco, double rules along raised bands and floral roll to the ends of the spine gilt, blue cloth sides, edges of text block marbled. 167 lithographic plates (numbered to 166, with 102A and 102B), which which 3 are folding. Endpapers renewed. Blind stamp of the Wigan free public library to the title, with inked and pencilled numbers to the verso. Corners of boards worn, minor crease and a couple of short closed tears affecting the margin of the front endpapers, the title, and leaf B1, occasional light spots to contents. Very good condition.
Chappuis, Paul Emile | Carte de visite depicting the Crystal Palace in Sydenham
£50.00
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A lovely carte de visite depicting the Crystal Palace in its permanent home at Sydenham sometime after 1856, when the Brunel water towers, one of which is visible in the photo, were erected. The structure was originally built to house the Exhibition of the Industry of all Nations (the Great Exhibition) in Hyde Park in 1851. Popular acclaim saw it preserved and reopened in Sydenham in 1854, but it was destroyed by a fire in 1936. This card bears the ticket of photographer Paul Emile Chappuis (1816-1887), whose Fleet Street studio operated between 1859 and 1871. Chappuis was also an inventor who held several patents on reflectors that would allow light into buildings that would otherwise require gaslights during the day. The firm that he set up to manufacture them was in operation until the Second World War.
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London: Chappuis, [between 1859 and 1871].
Cabinet card (103 x 62 mm). Photographer’s ticket to the verso. Just a couple of tiny spots. Excellent condition.
Chinsamy-Turan, Anusuya | The Microstructure of Dinosaur Bone
£150.00
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First edition, first printing. A superb copy of the first book devoted solely to dinosaur bone histology.
Some of the earliest paleontological researchers, including Louis Agassiz and Gideon Mantell, studied the microscopic structure of fossilised bones, but it was not until the 1950s that “the systematic study of archosaur palaeohistology began in earnest with the pioneering studies of Enlow & Brown”, who showed that cellular structure was preserved intact in fossils and that it “contained a wealth of information regarding the evolution and function of skeletal tissues in extinct organisms”. This was followed in the 1970s by the work of Armand de Ricqlès, who posited that “palaeohistological features could be correlated with growth rates and thus could indirectly shed light on the thermal physiology of extinct organisms”, in other words, that the microstructures of bones could reveal whether dinosaurs were warm-blooded (Bailleul, et al. “Dinosaur Palaeohistology: Review, Trends, and New Avenues of Investigation”, PeerJ, September 2019, pp. 3-4).
Author Anusuya Chinsamy-Turan (1962 - ), of the University of Cape Town, was the first scientist to attempt reconstruction of a dinosaur growth curve based on the microstructure of its fossilised bones, and is today one of the world’s leading experts on dinosaur histology. She is the author of more than one hundred academic articles and four books, and has won numerous awards, including the Academy of Science of South Africa’s Gold Medal.
The Microstructure of Dinosaur Bones draws on Chinsamy-Turan’s extensive experience in this field. “In this well-written, well-edited volume, she concludes that bone microstructure does indicate how bone formed during growth, and it does provide information on how factors such as seasonality, ontogenetic age, and lifestyle adaptations affected its growth, but she also finds that speculations about physiology based on bone histology are just that: speculations... Chinsamy-Turan has done the scientific community a great service by pulling together the wealth of information about dinosaur bone microstructure, and interpreting that information clearly and logically. Starting with a clear explanation of the organization of bone tissue on a microstructural level and the changes in bone composition during fossilization, she moves on to a helpful overview of dinosaur phylogeny and an insightful explanation of modern approaches to the study of dinosaur bones. Detailed descriptions of bone biology and beautiful color plates of dinosaur bone histology make dinosaur osteology accessible to any biologist who is fascinated with the biology of dinosaurs, as well as to both professors and graduate students working in this field” (Spotila, “Bred in the Bone: Bone Microstructures Bring Dinosaurs to Life”, BioScience 56 (3), 2006).
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...Deciphering Biology with Fine-Scale Techniques. Baltimore & London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005.
Octavo. Original black cloth, titles to spine in silver. With the dust jacket. 4 double-sided plates from colour photographs, diagrams, charts, and illustrations from black and white photos throughout the text. Excellent condition, with just a single tiny bump to the edge of the upper board and a few small scratches to the dust jacket.
Clerke, Agnes M. | The Herschels and Modern Astronomy
£250.00
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First edition of this biographical work on the astronomers William, Caroline, and John Herschel by one of the “great popularisers of science of the Victorian period” (Ogilvie, Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science, p. 270). Copies of The Herschels and Modern Astronomy are uncommon on the market, particularly in such a nice example of the publisher’s binding.
Agnes Mary Clerke was taught at home by her scholarly parents, and “by the age of eleven she had mastered Herschel’s Outlines of Astronomy” (Ogilvie, p. 270). Settling in London in 1877, she pursued a career as a writer, producing a remarkable body of work. Clerke “possessed the rare ability to communicate clearly the complexities of scientific theory to a popular audience, while synthesising masses of astronomical information into a coherent whole for professional scientists, who had become so specialised that they could not see the larger connection between their work and other current discoveries in astronomy” (Ogilvie p. 270). Though she never held a position at a university or observatory, Clerke gained “partial admission” to the male-dominated word of astronomy. She had an extensive correspondence with other astronomers, was awarded the Actonian Prize by the Royal Institution, and in 1903 was elected an honorary member of the Royal Astronomical Society.
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New York: Macmillan & Co., 1895.
Octavo. Original green cloth, titles to spine and upper board gilt. Portrait frontispiece and 2 plates. Tiny bump to the edge of the upper board, very lightly rubbed at the tips, and what may be a tiny spot of dampstain affecting the extreme corner of the lower panel, light spotting to the edges of the text blocks and occasionally the contents. Very good condition, the cloth fresh.
Clow, Archibald & Nan L. | The Chemical Revolution
£30.00
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First edition, first impression of this comprehensive history of chemistry’s role in the Industrial Revolution by a professor of chemistry at the University of Aberdeen. A very nice copy.
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...A Contribution to Social Technology. London: The Batchworth Press, 1952.
Large octavo. Original blue cloth, title to spine gilt. Colour frontispiece and 52 black and white plates. A couple of tiny pencil notes in the margins, leaf of manuscript notes loosely inserted. Spine rolled, cloth lightly rubbed at the extremities. An excellent copy, the contents clean.
Conklin, Edward Grant | The Organization and Cell-Lineage of the Ascidian Egg
£450.00
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First edition, first printing of a foundational work in embryology. This copy from the library of marine biologist Ernest William MacBride, who donated it to Imperial College Library, from which it was officially withdrawn. Rare in commerce.
Though he considered a religious career, Edward Grant Conklin’s (1863-1952) “burning interest was in biology, and he decided to enter the graduate school at Johns Hopkins University. Johns Hopkins was an extraordinary place to obtain a graduate education in biology because it was a relatively new school with revolutionary plans to integrate the experimental method into American biology... During the summer of 1890, Conklin was at Woods Hole in search of suitable material for his doctoral dissertation. He chose the marine snail Crepidula and discovered that its eggs divide according to a fixed pattern of spiral cleavage, which enabled him to follow individual cells and their descendants to their final places in the tissues and organs of the larva. He had performed one of the first cell lineage analyses, which were the rage at Woods Hole for the next decade. This experience also launched a lifelong love of the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, where Conklin subsequently spent almost every summer. After graduate school, as a faculty member at Northwestern University and at the University of Pennsylvania, Conklin extended his cell lineage studies to the embryos of other animals, including the ascidian Styela. This was to be his most important and indelible work. Conklin found that Styela eggs showed different pigments, which were localized in the cytoplasm and after fertilization segregated into the progenitor cells of different larval tissues. The most spectacular of these regions was the yellow crescent, or myoplasm, which was deposited in the tail muscle cells of the tadpole larva. Conklin had discovered a natural cell lineage marker. More importantly, he had demonstrated that the undivided egg, far from being a homogeneous mass of protoplasm, possesses a remarkable degree of cytoplasmic organization” (Society for Developmental Biology biography).
The Swiss developmental biologist Walter Jakob Gehring would later describe the paper as a “milestone”, praising in particular its colour lithographs. “This article of 120 pages and 12 plates, including 5 color plates was published in the Journal of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia which allowed him the use of colored plates, depicting among other things the yellow crescent, a fascinating structure in the Styeia embryo which still has kept some of its secrets. Originally I thought that Conklin had exaggerated he brilliance of the yellow crescent in his publication, but when I saw the crescent of Styeia for the first time through the microscope with my own eyes, I became convinced that Conklin's illustraions are completely accurate” (Gehring, “Precis of Edwin G. Conklin's JEZ article, ‘Mosaic Development in Ascidian Eggs’”, Journal of Experimental Zoology, vol. 301, no. 6, 2004).
Conklin was also “A strong supporter of the Eugenics movement” and “a member of numerous societies dedicated to the ideology of purifying the Human race of unwanted and unfavorable elements. Conklin was a charter member of the Galton Society, which was formed in 1918 by Madison Grant, as well as being director of the American Eugenics Society from 1923 until 1930” (The Embryo Project Encyclopedia).
The previous owner of this copy, Ernest William MacBride (1866-1940), spent most of his career as a professor of zoology at University College London and was one of the last professional biologists to support both the Lamarckian theory of evolution and the idea that embryological stages recapitulate a species’ evolutionary history. Like the author of this paper he was a prominent eugenicist, a supporter of forced sterilisation and of fascist dictatorships in Europe.
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Philadelphia: Journal of the Academy of Natural Sciences, 1905.
Folio. Blue cloth library binding, blue morocco title label to spine. 12 plates of which 5 are colour lithographs. Ownership signature of E. W. MacBride to the front free endpaper. Library call numbers to tail of spine in white, Imperial College Library bookplates, bar code ticket, and lending card to the front endpapers with withdrawn stamps, library ink stamps to both sides of the title leaf. Cloth scuffed and marked with some worn areas along the joints and at the ends of the spine, title page toned, occasional light spots and marks to contents. Very good condition.
Cotton, Lizzie E. | Bee Keeping for Profit
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RESERVED Second edition of this rare example of a commercial beekeeping work by a woman, first published in 1880.
Author Lizzie Cotton describes herself in the introduction as a professional apiarist “engaged in raising honey for market”, and this volume was published to advertise the “Controllable Hive”, which she invented, and the “New System of Bee Management” she developed for it. The hive was designed with separate glass boxes on the tops and sides for honeycomb production, and she claimed that her system provided regular feeding so that colonies survived the winter, prevented swarming, and increased honey production and profits. Cotton writes that she distrusted “patented” hive designs as often being swindles, and did not patent hers so that anyone could construct their own “for much cheaper than I furnish them”, though she was willing to sell a hive with two sample glass honey boxes for eight dollars, or with a full set of glass boxes for twelve.
It seems that there was much controversy about Cotton within the apiarist community. “Her name cropped up regularly in the Humbugs and Swindlers column in Bee Culture. People complained that their bees had swarmed, and they had not made a profit from their bees. Cotton also had a tendency to advertise a sale on her hives after the sale had already expired” (Horn, Beeconomy, p. 187). In a letter to bee culture in the 1886 a correspondent writes that a swarm he ordered from her was of high quality and producing well in a Controllable Hive. The editors respond that “We are very glad to get the above report... With the very large prices Mrs. Cotton charges for whatever she advertises, she certainly ought to give good measure and good quality, and we are very glad if she is beginning to do so” (Bee Culture, July 15, 1886, p. 588).
Cotton herself hits back in the introduction to this volume, writing that “Since the day I introduced my Controllable Hive and New System of Bee Management to the notice of the public, the worthless bee hive swindlers and their tools have been boiling over with wrath against me, lying and slandering me through the public journals, and especially through the Bee Journals, and all because, that I, a woman, had succeeded in inventing a bee hive and new system of bee management superior to anything yet produced, and which was fast coming into use on its merits, among bee keepers; and consequently the sale of other hives was decreasing in the same proportion.”
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...A New System of Bee Management. Second Edition. Illustrated. Price One Dollar. West Gorham, Maine: privately published, 1883.
Octavo. Original purple cloth with Greek key design blocked in blind to the boards. Engraved portrait frontispiece and illustrations throughout the text. Contemporary ownership inscription of Marcus J. James to the front pastedown. Cloth rubbed and marked with wear at the extremities, upper corner bumped, hinges cracked. Good condition.
de Muyttere, Charles | Porcelain card of a Belgian patissier
£50.00
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RESERVED The attractive and delicately printed “cartes porcelaine” of Charles de Muyttere, patissier. Printed using multi-colour metallic ink on a lead white ground, the card depicts him holding a three-tiered confection and pointing to his elaborately engraved name. Surrounding him are five other offerings, including an elaborate architectural construction and a fountain with two doves, what look like a pie and a dish of fruit but may have been complex sugar sculptures, and a five-tiered pastry under a glass dome.
“Most surviving trade cards produced by chromolithographers in the years leading up to the middle of the nineteenth century are Belgian. They belong to a broader category of lithographed product generally referred to in Belgium and France as ‘cartes porcelaine’ (enameled cards). Their common feature is that they were printed on card that had been coated with white lead (otherwise known as ceruse or carbonate of lead); the substance was similar to the lead paint used by artists and was often referred to in France as Clichy white. Card with this white lead coating was subject to pressure from steel cylinders at the final stage of manufacture, which gave it a sheen and also ensured a perfectly smooth printing surface. This provided lithographic printers with an opportunity to produce extremely intricate work, which they did by turning to the process of engraving on stone” (Twyman, A History of Chromolithography, p. 422, cited by the Princeton Graphic Arts Collection).
This card was printed by Eduard Daveluy of Bruges, whose own trade card is held in the collection of the Rijksmuseum.
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Bruges: Eduard Daveluy, c. 1840.
Chromolithographic trade card (92 x 56 mm). 4 small spots of paper adhered to the back from placement in an album. Excellent condition.
de Salm, Constance | Vingt-Quatre Heures d'une Femme Sensible
£950.00
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First edition. Author Constance de Salm (1767-1845) was a highly regarded French writer and moral philosopher, and an important member of a circle of leading intellectuals and scientists. Though forgotten for much of the 19th and 20th centuries, she is now the subject of renewed historical interest, providing a window onto the lives and intellectual networks of women in Revolutionary and Napoleonic France.
De Salm spent most of her life promoting the equality of women, and her most important work, the poem Épître aux femmes (1797), was a direct attack on the language and social structures that uphold patriarchy, as well as an exhortation to women to liberate themselves. During her career “she used a variety of genres to address issues of importance to women, such as equal access to educational opportunities and to family courts, recognition of intellectual achievement, the infantilization of women and the denigration of their abilities, the cost to women’s health of reproduction, and adequately renumerated work for poor, widowed, and single women. In many ways she can be usefully compared to Mary Wollstonecraft…” (Hine, Constance de Salm, Her Influence and Her Circle in the Aftermath of the French Revolution, p. 4).
De Salm’s friendships with scientists were an important part of her intellectual life. She was close to the astronomer Joseph-Jérome Lalande, who left her his unpublished manuscripts and asked her to write his eulogy. “Not only did she know Lalande well enough to have him entrust her with securing his legacy, but she was acquainted with renowned scientists like the natural philosopher Auguste de Candolle, the botany professor at the Jardin du Roi, Antoine de Jussieu, the naturalist Alexander von Humboldt… all of whom were among her circle of friends and frequented her salon… Her involvement can be used to illustrate the shift from earlier philosophical debates among scientists to the increasing interest on the part of women in scientific culture in the latter part of the eighteenth and the early part of the nineteenth centuries ” (Hine pp. 2-3).
The present text, Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Sensitive Woman, is an epistolary novel exploring the mindset of a woman whose lover may have abandoned her for another. It was praised by her friend, the author Stendhal and is now rare in the first edition. We can locate only one institutional copy, at the British Library.
- ...ou Une Grande Leçon. Paris: Arthus Bertrand, 1824. Octavo. Contemporary quarter black skiver, blue boards, spine gilt in compartments. Engraved frontispiece. 1 leaf of publisher’s ads at rear. Spine rolled, binding rubbed, spotting and toning of contents, primarily in the margins. A very good copy.
Emiliani, Cesare | Ancient Temperatures
£35.00
- Offprint of an early popular article on ancient climate by one of the founders of the field, Cesare Emiliani (1922-1995).
During the late 1950s Emiliani studied the tests (shells) of marine amoebas called foraminifera that are found in samples taken from the floors of the deep oceans. He realised that the oxygen isotope composition of the tests was influenced by atmospheric conditions at the time they were alive and that the deep-sea cores could be used to chart climate going back millions of years. This work laid the foundations for modern analysis of past climates. It also established that the ice ages were a cyclic phenomena; contributed to our understanding ocean floor spreading and plate tectonics; and provided influential support for the hypothesis of Milutin Milanković that climate changes in the deep past had been driven by long-term alterations in the Earth’s orbit and geology. Emiliani remained a leading figure in the study of Earth’s climate history through the 1990s, and was awarded both the Vega Medal and the Alexander Aggasiz Medal. -
...Reprinted from Scientific American, February 1958. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman and Company, 1958.
12 page pamphlet, stapled. Illustrations throughout. Very faintly toned at the extreme edges of the spine and wrappers. A superb copy.
Erdmann, Rhoda | Praktikum der Gewebepflege oder Explanation Besonders der Gewebezüchtung
£450.00
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First edition, first impression of “the first German textbook that provided detailed instructions on tissue culture methods and indicated how they might be applied for cancer research”, by the pioneering cytologist Rhoda Erdmann (Ogilvie, Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science, p. 424). Rare, with only one institutional copy listed in WorldCat, at the University of Groningen.
Erdmann (1870-1935) struggled throughout her career, despite being recognised by her peers as a talented and forward-looking researcher. Her father opposed science as a career, so she only pursued it following his death. After qualifying in 1907, she worked at the University of Munich and did experimental cell research at the Helgoland and Naples zoological stations for her dissertation. She then became a scientific assistant at the Robert Koch Institute for Infectious Diseases, but the poor pay forced her to undertake literary work on the side.
In 1913 the American Lorande Loss Woodruff announced his discovery that paramecium could reproduce asexually seemingly indefinitely. Erdmann had been studying “the importance of sexual reproduction for both nuclear division and death of single-celled organisms” and wrote requesting samples of his cultures (Ogilvie). Instead, her offered her a position a Yale, where she “solved a number of problems related to parthenogenesis. She also updated her techniques of tissue culture under Ross Harrison, head of the Osborn Laboratory at Yale, who had developed new methods of culturing nerve cells” (Ogilvie).
On her way back to Germany in 1914 Erdmann was held as an enemy alien in Britain until she was offered the position of lecturer at Yale by Harrison, “an extraordinary offer since the charter of the university had to be changed to admit her as a woman faculty member” (Ogilvie). With scientific independence and a good salary, this was a productive period in her career, but it came to an end in 1918 when rumours about her research were enflamed by anti-German sentiment. “She was forcibly removed from her position and accused of plotting to poison the New Haven drinking water, and of destroying American chickens with a chicken virus that would poison the brains of American soldiers. After four and a half months in detention in the Waverley House in New York (a prison for ‘wayward girls’), she was released following the intervention of Ross Harrison and American female friends who had paid five thousand dollars in fines… Erdmann’s health suffered for the rest of her life from the results of this incarceration” (Ogilvie).
On her return to Germany, Erdmann was rejected fifty times when applying for positions, but was finally hired by the Friederich-Williams University Institute for Cancer Research in Berlin. “It was a position without additional personnel and no funding for laboratory equipment. Nevertheless, Erdmann established the first German department for experimental cytology in two empty rooms… Initial research conditions were so bad that she figured she had lost the first four years for research” (Ogilvie). Erdmann was not appointed to a teaching teaching post until 1929, and her laboratory did not become a formal university institute until the following year. As late as 1927 she was earning a lower salary than her assistant. “Meanwhile both students and coworkers were attracted to the new field and the medical faculty recognized experimental cytology as an interdisciplinary science important to both medical biology and physiology. Erdmann supplied both fields with assistants well trained in cytology” (Ogilvie).
During this period she also founded an international journal for cell research which had editors and contributors from as far away as Japan, and covered “every branch of cytology, including biochemistry, cell physiology, electrophysiology, and radiation biology. This was the only international scientific publication published by a woman. Erdmann also planned several international cell biology congresses, advertising them in the issues of the journal” (Ogilvie).
The final years of Erdmann’s life were blighted by the rise of the Nazis. She was jailed by the Gestapo for helping Jews escape Germany, and then lost her position under the “Aryan” laws of 1934. She died in Berlin the following year, having “promoted the importance of tissue culture studies in biology and cancer research in her lectures and scientific publications until her untimely death” (Ogilvie).
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...Mit 101 Textabbildungen. Berlin: Julius Springer, 1922.
Octavo. Contemporary library binding of marbled boards with black cloth backstrip, titles to spine gilt. Illustrations from photographs throughout the text. Inked shelf number to the title, and ink stamps of the Leipzig Surgical Hospital to the title and 9 other leaves. Binding a little worn at the edges. Very good condition.
Farlow, James O. & M. K. Brett-Surman, editors | The Complete Dinosaur
£75.00
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First edition, first printing. A beautiful copy of one of the most scholarly and best-selling of the dinosaur encyclopedias published during the "dinomania" of the 1990s.
The Complete Dinosaur, copiously illustrated and accessible to both professional and popular audiences, contains forty-three essays by leading geologists and palaeontologists on dinosaur physiology, behaviour, and evolution; the history of palaeontology around the world; and the appearance of dinosaurs in popular culture. The Quarterly Review of Biology described it as “the most readable and interesting book on many aspects of dinosaurs that I know” in which “even the dinosaurian veteran will find novel insights and perspectives”. They cite in particular the chapters on the history of dinosaur studies as “the most comprehensive and historiographically integrated treatment of the subject to date” as well as “Mary Higby Schweitzer’s thoughtful and rational review on how we study the biomolecular resides in fossil organisms, the ‘dialogue’ on dinosaur extinction between a gradualist (Peter Dodson) and a catastrophist (Dale A. Russell), and R. E. H. Reid’s powerful and comprehensive treatment of dinosaurian physiology” (The Quarterly Review of Biology vol. 73, no. 4, December 1998).
Still in print, a second, revised and expanded, edition was published to much acclaim in 2012.
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Bloomington & Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 1997.
Tall quarto. Original grey cloth, titles to spine and T-rex design to upper board in black, yellow endpapers embossed with patterns of dinosaur scales. With the dust jacket. 8 double-sided colour plates, greyscale illustrations throughout the text. Just a single tiny crease at the edge of the dust jacket. An exceptional copy.
Fell, Honor B. | A Discussion on the Pericellular Environment and its Regulation in Vertebrate Tissues
£100.00
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First edition, first printing. The uncommon full issue of the journal containing fourteen papers read at a symposium on the intercellular environment in multicellular organisms, organised by prominent cell biologist Honor B. Fell (1900-1986). A very attractive and fresh copy in the original wrappers. As well as serving as the organiser of the symposium, Fell contributed the article, “The role of mucopolysaccharides in the protection of cartilage cells against the immune reaction”.
Fell’s childhood interest in animals and nature was encouraged by her parents, and she received what was at the time an unusually science-focused education. She earned four degrees at St. Andrews and the University of Edinburgh, and then went to Cambridge “to learn a new technique pioneered by T. S. P. Strangeways in his research hospital. Tissues culture was a relatively new art at this time, and he had developed it to the extent that he could study the behavior of living cells on a warm stage. Fell was impressed, and when Strangeways offered her a job as scientific assistant with a grant from the Medical Research Council, she accepted.
Her first major study was on chick embryos, examining their cartilage and bones. This work culminated in her first important paper from the Strangeways in 1925, a study of the histogenesis of bone and cartilage in the long bone of embryonic chicks. From this beginning, she used techniques of organ culture to analyze the actions of various agents upon the cells of bone, cartilage, and associated tissues. The preliminary study was continued, and in 1926 she and Strangeways demonstrated that cartilage would not only grow but would differentiate in culture” (Ogilvie, Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science, p. 440).
When Strangeways died in 1926 Fell was appointed director of the institute, a position she held for the next forty-one years, performing important research on vitamin A and rheumatoid arthritis, and producing research that led to the discovery of interleuken-1, an important agent of the immune system. Fell was made a fellow of the Royal Society and Dame Commander of the British Empire, and received honorary degrees from Harvard, Cambridge, and Smith College.
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...Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. B. Biological Sciences. Volume 271, Pages 233-410, Number 912. 17 July, 1975. London: The Royal Society, 1975.
Large octavo. Original light brown wrappers printed in black. 3 single and 9 double-sided plates from photomicrographs. Wrappers very lightly rubbed, narrow strip of fading at the top of the upper wrapper. Excellent condition.