Recent Acquisitions

Third edition of this nicely illustrated work, an unusually attractive copy.

Gifford “lived much of her life in Falmouth and then in Minehead, Somerset. She wrote a book on marine botanists in 1848 and contributed plants, primarily specimens of seaweed, to the Somerset Archaeological Society. Sensitive to the conribution of other women botanists, she memorialised Elizabeth Warren in 1865 for her zealous and careful collections. She corresponded with the Glasgow professor of botany G. A. Walker Arnott and her letters are included in his correspondence in the British Museum of Natural History. One of her papers appeared in the Journal of Botany in 1871. Her plants are at the Taunton Museum. She is memorialised by the algae genus Giffordia Batt” (Ogilvie, Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science, p. 501).

A set of fifteen photographs of the aftermath of the atomic bombings of Japan, twelve of which can be attributed to photographer Yosuke Yamahata (1917-1966) and were taken in Nagasaki on August 10th, 1945, the day after the attack. These include the well-known images of a nursing mother, a dead horse by a wagon, a man holding his injured child, a dead woman and child at the Uragami train station, a bandaged woman and child holding rice balls, and a torii still standing in the wreckage. The other three photos form a panorama of a levelled city as seen from across a river with hills in the background. These are not in the same format as the Yamahata photos and it is unclear whether they depict Nagasaki or Hiroshima (though the manuscript note on the back describes the scene as Hiroshima). All of the photos were owned at some point by the same person, who has numbered them and in some cases written short captions on the backs.

Yamahata was born in Singapore, the son of photographer Shōgyoku Yamahata, who owned the studio G. T. Sun. Yamahata spent his early career employed by his father and in 1940 became a military photographer, working mainly in China and South East Asia. He returned to Japan shortly before the atomic bombing of Hiroshima — travelling through the city by train only the day before — and was near Nagasaki when the second bomb was dropped. Together with the writer Jun Higashi and the painter Eiji Yamada, Yamahata was immediately assigned to document the destruction, and the three travelled by train for twelve hours, arriving at three in the morning. Over the course of the day he took around 119 exposures, the only extensive photographic record of the immediate aftermath of either atomic bombing.

Recalling this experience seven years later, Yamahata wrote that “the explosion and the fires had reduced the entire city (about four square kilometers) to ashes in a single instant. Relief squads, medical and fire-fighting teams, could do nothing but wait. Only the luck of being in a well-placed air raid shelter could be of any use for survival. Even if the medical and fire-fighting teams from the surrounding areas had been able to rush to the scene, the roads were completely blocked with rubble and charred timber. One had not the faintest idea where the water main might be located, so it would have been impossible to fight the fires. Telephone and telegraph services were suspended; the teams could not contact the outside world for help. It was truly a hell on earth. Those who had just barely survived the intense radiation — their eyes burned and their exposed skin scalded — wandered around aimlessly with only sticks to lean on, waiting for relief. Not a single cloud blocked the direct rays of the August sunlight, which shone down mercilessly on Nagasaki, on that second day after the blast” (Yamahata, “Photographing the Bomb, A Memo”, 1952).

A few of Yamahatas’ photographs appeared in the Japanese daily Mainichi Shimbun, but the occupying American regime prevented further publication. Yamahata hid the negatives, of which 71 have survived, and clandestine copies began circulating privately, though these were confiscated whenever discovered by US officials (see the album of a US M.P. officer sold at Bonhams NY in June 2014). It was only in 1952, with the removal of restrictions, that Yamahata was able to speak out and share the photos publicly. The provenance of these copies is unclear. The notes are in a typical American hand of the early to mid-20th century, and they may be confiscated copies, or perhaps were purchased later by a visitor to Japan. One is annotated “wrecked house, most are made of wood” as if the writer had some experience of the region. One of the notes on the back of the panoramic set is, “full view of Hiroshima”, and the other reads, “Notice most concrete buildings still standing”, so perhaps these were mailed from someone in Japan to a correspondent back at home in America, to illustrate experiences conveyed in a letter.

First edition 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.

“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 20th century.

First edition, first impression.

This copy contains the library stamp of the Castle Bromwich Aircraft Factory, which was founded in 1936 as part of the Shadow Factory plan to quickly ramp up aircraft production in case of war. It became the largest and most successful plant of its type during the Second World War, being the largest Spitfire factory in the UK and also producing Lancaster bombers. Immediately after hostilities ended it was taken over by car body specialists Fisher & Ludlow, and is still in operation today, now manufacturing vehicles for Jaguar Land Rover.

First edition, first impression of this significant work on the interference of wind tunnel walls on the planes being tested.

Author Hermann Glauert (1892-1934) was a prominent British aerodynamicist specialising in aerofoil and propeller theory. He served as the Principal Scientific Officer of the Royal Aircraft Establishment, Farnborough and also wrote the important text The Elements of Aerofoil and Airscrew Theory, published in 1926.

This copy contains the library stamp of the Castle Bromwich Aircraft Factory, which was founded in 1936 as part of the Shadow Factory plan to quickly ramp up aircraft production in case of war. It became the largest and most successful plant of its type during the Second World War, being the largest Spitfire factory in the UK and also producing Lancaster bombers. Immediately after hostilities ended it was taken over by car body specialists Fisher & Ludlow, and is still in operation today, now manufacturing vehicles for Jaguar Land Rover.

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).

A charming, illustrated children's book by the prolific natural history author William Percival Westell (1874-1943).

Westell was a self-educated naturalist who served as the curator of the Lechworth Museum for three decades and “strove to make his publications accessible to all by eschewing technical language” (Moore, “William Percival Westell”, Archives of Natural History, volume 42, issues 2). It is estimated that he sold around half a million copies of his many books, published by an astonishing 37 different publishers (Moore).

First edition, first printing of this collection of writings by Vera Rubin (1928-2016), the astronomer who produced the first observational data for the existence of dark matter. Rare in such beautiful condition. The pieces compiled here include “An Unconventional Career”, which is the transcript of a 1992 interview on Rubin’s life and career; the transcript of her 1992 Desert Island Discs interview; her important essay “Women’s Work” on the history of women in astronomy, biographical sketches of female astronomers, and articles on galaxies, stellar evolution, and the technological and social history of astronomy.

Vera Rubin was the daughter of an engineer who fostered her love of science, particularly astronomy, from an early age. She became the only astronomy graduate at Vasser in 1948 and, after discovering that her first choice of Princeton did not accept female graduate students, she earned her Master’s at Cornell and doctorate at Georgetown. Rubin was particularly interested in the rotation of galaxies, which she had researched under the pioneering astronomer Margaret Burbidge in 1963. At the time, galactic rotation had not properly been measured, but it was expected that the same law of motion that governs the movement of bodies in the solar system would apply to the stars in galaxies. As Newton had shown, the speed of rotation of the stars should drop in proportion to the square root of their distance from the centre. But when Rubin and her collaborator Kent Ford measured star speeds in the Andromeda Galaxy they discovered, to their surprise, that the stars at the edges of the galaxy rotated at the same speed, or slightly faster than, those closer to the centre. This violated the laws of both Newton and Einstein, and implied that the galaxies should have been fraying at the edges as stars were hurled into the void.

The only explanation for this result was that some additional mass was holding the galaxies together. The concept of dark matter had first been proposed by astronomers Fritz Zwicky and Jan Oort in the 1930s, but was largely ignored. And because no one had predicted its effects on galaxies, Rubin didn’t initially recognise its relevance to their situation. But as she explained in an interview with psychologist and author Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, “Months were taken up in trying to understand what I was looking at… One day I just decided that I had to understand what this complexity was that I was looking at and I made sketches on a piece of paper and suddenly I understood it all. I have no other way of describing it. It was exquisitely clear. I don’t know why I hadn’t done this two years earlier.” What Rubin realised was that if the outer edges of the galaxy contained a halo of dark matter, the additional mass would hold these quickly rotating stars in place.

Within a few years, other astronomers had constructed a theoretical framework for our understanding of dark matter, and we now have multiple ways to observe its effects on galaxies. The discovery of this mysterious form of matter has had a profound impact on our understanding of everything from the movement of stars to the very life and death of the universe itself. As astronomer Emily Levasque of the University of Washington at Seattle put it, “The existence of dark matter has utterly revolutionized our concept of the universe and our entire field; the ongoing effort to understand the role of dark matter has basically spawned entire subfields within astrophysics and particle physics at this point”

Rubin received numerous honours for her work - she was awarded the National Medal of Science in 1993 and became only the second woman after Caroline Herschel to receive the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society. Rubin was long considered a front-runner for the Nobel Prize, and many see the Committee’s failure to recognise her as a permanent stain on its credibility.

First edition, first printing of this classic of science illustration.

Linus Pauling was one of the 20th century's most versatile scientists, making important contributions to chemistry, physics, biology, & physiology. He had a special interest in molecular structures, and his 1954 Nobel Prize in chemistry cited his "research into the nature of the chemical bond and its application to the elucidation of the structure of complex substances" (Nobel prize biography).

The similarly versatile scientific illustrator Roger Hayward first worked with Pauling in 1946, when he illustrated Pauling's General Chemistry, the first of four books on which the two collaborated. But it was this volume, conceived as an introduction to molecular structure for older children, which was the most successful. It comprises 57 beautiful full-page colour illustrations, from the simple two-atom hydrogen molecule to complex structures such as polypeptide chains and hemoglobin, alongside Pauling's clear and concise explanations of chemical bonding and how a molecule's structure affects its function. A very attractive copy.

The 1643 Amsterdam edition of the “misogynist masterpiece” The Secrets of Women, an influential and widely-disseminated work of natural philosophy that laid the intellectual foundations for early modern witch persecutions (Cabre, review of Women’s Secrets in ISIS volume 85, no 3, 1994). The publisher of this edition was Johannes Janssonius (1588-1664), Willem Blaeu’s main rival in map publishing, and it includes an engraved title depicting the mythological figure Callisto, in labour and appealing to the goddess Artemis.

This copy has a distinguished provenance, having been in the library of the poet and angling bibliographer Thomas Westwood (1814-1888), who added a manuscript note on Izaak Walton’s second-hand quotation of De Secretis. It was later owned by the medievalist and economic historian Louis Francis Salzmann (1878-1971), and was most recently in the library of noted barrister and bibliophile Sir George Engle (1926-2016).

Long attributed to Albertus Magnus, De Secretis was probably composed by one of his followers during the late 13th or early 14th century, and survives in around 83 manuscript copies, of which 50 were printed in the 15th century and over 70 in the 16th (Lemay, Women’s Secrets. A Translation of Pseudo-Albertus Magnus’s De Secretis Mulierum with Commentaries, p. 1). Though the contents cover what we would now consider obstetrics and gynaecology, including menstruation, spermatogenesis, conception, fetal development, and infertility, the text is not a practical medical manual but a philosophical exploration of the human body and its relation to the cosmos.

As a follower of Albertus Magnus, the treatises’s author “believed that the study of nature as perceived through sense experience and then analyzed in a rational manner forms a single discipline through which we come to comprehend the universe in its corporeal aspects. Human reproduction, a main subject of this treatise, is one of these aspects, that nevertheless has repercussions for our understanding of the entire cosmos. This becomes particularly evident in the treatment given to astrological influences on the developing fetus. Pseudo-Albert begins his discussion by outlining how the sphere of the fixed stars confers upon the fetus various virtues, and moves back and forth from particular celestial effects to a general treatment of prime matter and the intelligences” (Lemay, p. 3).

De Secretis was most likely “designed to be used within a religious community as a vehicle for instructing priests in natural philosophy, particularly as it pertains to human generation... A strong subtext of the Secrets, however, is the evil nature of women and the harm they can cause to their innocent victims: young children and their male consorts. Clearly then, another purpose of this treatise is to malign the female sex, a tradition that extends back in Christianity to second-century misogynist writings” (Lemay, p. 16).

Among the concepts that the text popularised were the idea that women’s menstrual blood was poisonous, that post-menopausal women (especially those who were poor) were more “venomous” because they could no longer expel the toxins, and that women were inherently lascivious beings with a physiological need to absorb the heat and life force of men. “It is these misogynistic ideas about women’s sexuality that seeded their demonization in the years that followed, as the Secrets served as a direct source for the Malleus maleficarum. Indeed, the most famous statement from the Malleus explicitly connects witchery with ideas about women’s sexuality rooted in the medieval period: ‘All witchcraft comes from carnal lust, which is in women insatiable’” (McLemore, “Medieval Sexuality, Medical Misogyny, and the Makings of the Modern Witch”, blog of the University of Notre Dame’s Medieval Studies Institute, October 30, 2020).

First edition, first printing of this foundational work. Presentation copy inscribed by the author to Francis Crick, “Dear Francis - I hope this book encourages you to think about cytoplasmic genetic systems (optimistically). With my regards, Ruth Sager”.

Ruth Sager (1918-1997) obtained her PhD under Barbara McClintock at Columbia and went on to become “renowned for her work on nonchromosomal genetics and cancer genetics” (Ogilvie, Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science, p. 1144). When she began this research in the 1950s, “the prevailing view stated that in eukaryotes (cells containing structures such as nuclei), the genes occur only in the nucleus on the chromosomes. While she was at the Rockefeller Institute, Sager began to suspect the existence of genetic material outside the nucleus” (Ogilvie). Using the Chlamydomonas genus of algae as her model organism, Sager carried out classical genetic experiments that allowed her map the nonchromosomal genes and show that they were especially stable. “She suggested that they represent a second genetic system that provide the organism with stability, and perhaps represented the existence of an earlier genetic system that existed before the chromosomes” (Ogilvie). Sager also began to suspect that “an increasing number of human diseases resulted from mutations in genes in respiratory organelles, and turned her attention to human genetics, especially the genetics of cancer”, becoming one of the first scientists to study the role of mutations in suppressor genes as a primary cause of tumours.

The rare first edition of this groundbreaking work on the embryology of the human eye. No copies are noted in auction records since 1980.

Dame Ida C. Mann (married name Gye, 1893-1983) entered the London School of Medicine for Women in 1914, and also undertook training at the Royal Free and St Mary's hospitals. During the period at St Mary's she assisted Professor J. E. S. Frazer in embryological research; her developmental studies were presented as a dissertation for the DSc (London, 1924), and formed the basis of her notable first textbook, The Development of the Human Eye (1928), still in print forty years later” (ODNB).

“After qualifying Mann decided to specialize in ophthalmology, and took her first post under Leslie Paton at St Mary's, becoming FRCS in 1924. She also held several teaching appointments while she progressed up the ladder towards consultant ophthalmologist status, reaching the highest point in 1927 with appointment as senior surgeon on the staff of Moorfields Eye Hospital, London, the first woman ever to do so. At the same time she established a Harley Street practice and consolidated herself as a leading clinical ophthalmologist in London, but still carried on her developmental studies and teaching (including the diploma course in Oxford). In this period up to the Second World War she learned and promoted the then new technique of slit-lamp microscopy of the eye, applying it both to patients and to animals in the London Zoo. She was also instrumental in bringing to London in 1938 Josef Dallos, the Hungarian pioneer of glass contact lenses, just ahead of the Nazi take-over of Hungary, and with him she established the first contact lens centre in the United Kingdom. With the outbreak of war it became necessary to evacuate Moorfields. At the instigation of Sir Hugh Cairns Mann moved to Oxford in 1941 to undertake the clinical training of medical students diverted from London, and there she was appointed to Margaret Ogilvy's readership in ophthalmology, as well as a personal chair, the first woman ever to hold the title of professor in the University of Oxford, and a professorial fellowship in St Hugh's College. Despite this time-consuming work she still travelled to London to perform surgery, carried out important research on the ocular effects of war gases, and kept up a staggering number of other activities, including the vigorous reorganization of Oxford Eye Hospital. In this period she was the first to use penicillin to treat ocular infection.” (ODNB).

Mann emigrated to Australia in 1949 and continued her medical and research career, travelling throughout Australasia and the Pacific to study eye diseases. “In recognition of Mann's many contributions to research, teaching, and clinical practice, she was appointed CBE (1950) and DBE (1980), as well as receiving honorary degrees, prizes, and medals from many countries (ODNB).

First edition, first printing. The full issue of the journal, containing a single paper by the accomplished marine biologist Howard Barraclough Fell (1917-1994), who worked at Victoria University of Wellington and then Harvard. He was considered one of the world’s foremost experts on fossil sea urchins.

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.

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.

Second edition of this classic in applied mathematics, originally published in 1933. With the ownership signature of computer scientist Phyllis Fox and the date January 31, 1956, indicating that Fox purchased this volume while working on the numerical solution of partial differential equations for UNIVAC.

During the late 1940s Phyllis Fox (1923 - ) earned undergraduate degrees in mathematics and electrical engineering and worked as an operator for GE’s differential analyser. In 1949 she obtained her master’s in electrical engineering at MIT, writing a program for the school’s unfinished vacuum tube computer the Whirlwind I. Fox then earned her doctorate in mathematics at MIT, supervised by the prominent applied mathematician Chia-Chiao Lin (1916-2013).

As Fox explained to an interviewer from the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics in 2005, between 1954 and 1958 she worked at the Courant Institute, an Atomic Energy Commission-funded department of the City University of New York. “[Richard] Courant ran it, but Courant, Kurt O. Friedrichs, Levy, all these famous, really, applied mathematicians were there, and I got a job. As what, I don’t know. But I wasn’t really a fluid dynamicist. They had bought a computer, a Univac. Now, none of these applied mathematicians really wanted to bother with the machine, but a physicist named Bob Richtmyer who came out of AEC and Los Alamos was there. He was interested in doing computations on the Univac... At that time, the main problem thing they were looking for was controlled thermonuclear. Now this isn’t the bomb. The controlled fusion, of course, is the source of all power, if you can make it work. Fine. Theoretically it was clean, and an infinite source of power, once you got it going. And the Russians were probably working on it, so it was very secret. But of course, the technique would apply also to Teller and his bomb. I wasn’t in the abstract analysis part of the research, but I helped with the computer probably, and some of the analysis of the equations involved, because I had that experience from MIT.”

After leaving CUNY, Fox worked on the DYNAMO programming language and the first LISP interpreter and manual, taught at the Newark College of Engineering, and consulted for Bell Labs until her retirement in 1984.

The author of the present volume, Louis Melville Milne-Thomson (1891-1974), was a professor at the Royal Naval College at Greenwich who made significant contributions to applied mathematics, including the Milne-Thomson circle theorem and the Milne-Thomson method for finding a holomorphic function. He was particularly concerned with “making mathematics accessible to the beginner or non-specialist” and in 1933 “published the first of several textbooks. The Calculus of Finite Differences was based on his own experience of making tables and, in its preface, he states that one motivation for writing it was the lack of other texts suitable for his students” (ODNB).

First edition of this important book on the use of “twilight sleep” anaesthesia during labour by the female surgeon who first advocated its use in the United States. Rare, with WorldCat listing only electronic copies, and only one copy appearing in auction records (Bonhams 2020).

Born into a Michigan farming family, Bertha van Hoosen (1863-1952) insisted on a medical education despite her parent’s active opposition, and put herself through school by working as a teacher, obstetrical nurse, and demonstrator in anatomy. After graduating she opened a private practice and also worked at the Woman’s Medical School of Northwestern University and as a professor of clinical gynaecology at the Illinois University Medical School. In 1918 Van Hoosen became the first woman to head a medical division at a coeducational university when she was appointed professor and head of obstetrics at Loyola. She was a founder and first president of the American Medical Women's Association, and advocated for women physicians to serve in the First World War.

“Throughout her career, Bertha van Hoosen’s major interest was in women’s health. She was an excellent general surgeon, but she was particularly concerned with women and children. She pioneered the use of scopolamine-morphine anaesthesia for childbirth. Although this method, known as twilight sleep, had become popular in Germany, it was not used in the United States. She produced a book and two articles on her research in this area” (Ogilvie, Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science p. 1320).

The rare offprint announcing “the most perfect sauropod skeleton ever discovered” (Ashworth, Paper Dinosaurs 40).

This superb, nearly complete specimen of a juvenile Camarasaurus was discovered at the Carnegie quarry shortly after it became Dinosaur National Monument. “In 1925 Gilmore described the specimen in this fully illustrated memoir” which includes a photo of the fossil as it was found and later as it was displayed as a panel mount (Ashworth). “The articulation of the bones allowed Gilmore to conclude that Camarasaurus did not have its highest elevation at the shoulders, as Osborn and Mook had reconstructed it, but rather stood highest at the hips, like Apatosaurus and Diplodocus” (Ashworth).

First edition, first printing, presentation copy inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, “Inscribed for Dr. G. A. C. Colston, from his long-time associate, Justine Hill, Baltimore, Mar 26, 1940”.

This work on disease-causing microbes was described as “the best popular presentation that had yet appeared” on the subject by psychiatrist Karl Menninger (Ogilvie, Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science, p. 601). Author Justina Hill (1893-?) attended Smith College and the University of Michigan, then served as a Red Cross worker, running a bacteriological laboratory in Spartanburg, South Carolina during the final two years of the First World War. She was then transferred with a Smith College unit to the Near East, where she ran a laboratory for five thousand refugees. “Upon returning to the United States, Hill was made an associate in bacteriology at the Brady Urological Institute and two years later an instructor in urology... She published numerous technical articles in medical journals as well as popular books on bacteriology” (Ogilvie). In 1942 she published Silent Enemies, on the communicable diseases of war, and in 1944 she contributed a piece in the Atlantic: “How Bad is the Flu? The possibility of recurrent epidemics, perhaps of increasing virulence, even of another pandemic, must be faced”.

The first edition of the first English book devoted to marine plants. A handsome copy, recently rebound and with all five of the delicate, hand-coloured plates. Only one other copy appears in auction records after the 1970s, at Bloomsbury in 2008.

Author Thomas Velley (baptised 1748-1806) was educated in the law at Oxford but devoted much of his time to botany, “especially to the study of algae. He collected in Essex, the Isle of Wight, and along the south coast. He was the friend and correspondent of Sir James Edward Smith, Dawson Turner, John Stackhouse, Sir Thomas Gery Cullum, Sir William Watson, and Richard Relhan, and became a fellow of the Linnean Society in 1792” (ODNB). Coloured Figures of Marine Plants was his only book, but he also published three scientific papers. At his death, his extensive herbarium was purchased for the Liverpool Botanic Garden.

Bibliography: Freeman, British Natural History Books 3820

First edition, first printing and a lovely copy in the dust jacket. The Field Book of Animals in Winter is much less common than Morgan’s book on ponds and streams, and is rarely found in such nice condition.

As a child, Ann Haven Morgan (1882-1966) developed a love of nature by exploring the areas around her home in Connecticut. She earned her bachelor’s degree and doctorate at Cornell, the latter under James G. Needham at the Limnological Laboratory.

Returning to Cornell, “she advanced steadily up the academic ladder, becoming a full professor in 1918. During the summer she conducted research and taught courses on echinoderms at the Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole... Although limnology (the study of inland waters) was her special subject – on which she wrote a useful book, Field Book of Ponds and Streams (1930) – Morgan was also interested in many other facets of zoology, particularly hibernating animals. Her Field Book of Animals in Winter (1939) reflected this interest. In 1949 the Encyclopaedia Britannica made it into an educational film” (Ogilvie, Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science p. 913).

Among her other scientific interests were conservation and ecology and educational reform. Morgan was a member of numerous professional societies, including the American Entomological Society, American Society of Naturalists, American Society of Zoologists, and the New York Herpetological Society. She was prominent enough to be one of only three women included in the 1933 edition of American Men of Science.

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).

First edition, first printing of this key reference work described by reviewers as “monumental” and an “instant classic” (Padian, K. “The Dinosauria”, Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, volume 11, number 2, June 1991). Though later printings are commonly available online, it is difficult to find first printings in nice condition.

The Dinosauria was “a comprehensive, authoritative review of current knowledge and theory about the dinosaurs” that reflected the dramatic shifts in palaeontology during the previous two decades (Wilford, review in The New York Times, January 27, 1991). The first edition contains twenty-nine chapters on dinosaur anatomy, physiology, behaviour, and evolution by twenty-three contributors including leading palaeontologists J. H. Ostrom, Jack Horner, Teresa Maryańska, Halszka Osmólska, Michael Benton and Jacques Gauthier. It was so successful that a revised and expanded second edition published in 2004 and remains in print today.

First edition, first printing of this important popular history of particle physics by “the preeminent public intellectual of fundamental physics”, Steven Weinberg (1933-2021) (Arkani-Hamad, “How Steven Weinberg Transformed Physics and Physicists, Quanta magazine, August 11, 2021). Uncommon in nice condition in the dust jacket.

Weinberg was one of the most important physicists of the 20th and 21st centuries, and was awarded the 1979 Nobel Prize for the electroweak theory, which unified two of the fundamental forces: electromagnetism and the nuclear weak force. “Working separately, Dr. Abdus Salam, a Pakistani theoretical physicist, came to the same conclusions as Dr. Weinberg. Their model became known as the Weinberg-Salam Theory. It was revolutionary, not only for proposing the unification of the electromagnetic and weak forces, but also for creating a classification system of masses and charges for all fundamental particles, thereby forming the basis of the Standard Model, which includes all the forces except gravity” (New York Times obituary, July 29, 2021).

“Though he had the respect, almost awe, of his colleagues for his scientific abilities and insights, he also possessed a rare ability among scientists to communicate and explain abstruse scientific ideas to the public. He was a sought-after speaker, and he wrote several popular books about science, notably The First Three Minutes: A Modern View of the Origin of the Universe (1977) (NYT). As Weinberg explains in the introduction, The Discovery of Subatomic Particles, “grew out of a course that I gave at Harvard in the spring of 1980... to engage students who were not assumed to have any prior training in mathematics or physics in learning about the great achievements of twentieth-century physics”. It “covers the discovery of the fundamental particles that make up all ordinary atoms: the electron, the proton, and the neutron” and was written “for readers who may not be familiar with classical physics, but are willing to pick up enough of it as they go along to be able to understand the rich tangle of ideas and experiments that make up the history of twentieth century physics”.

First edition, first impression. A rare copy of this charming, illustrated booklet on dinosaurs published by Warsaw’s Museum of the Earth. WorldCat only locates one copy, at the National Library of Poland. The detailed edition statement records that this book was submitted for typesetting in October 1969 and approved for printing in March 1970, with the order number dated 1969, for a total of 5,200 copies. Though the date 1979 appears above the statement, this is a typo, likely for 1970 (many thanks to Philip Penka of Bernett Penka Rare Books for the translation).

Author Teresa Maryańska (1937-2019)) was a leading dinosaur palaeontologist associated with the Museum of the Earth at the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, where she as vice-director between 1976 and 2006. “Her research was initially on invertebrate palaeontology. Her thesis concerned the Bryozoa, but she was always interested in vertebrates and looked for an opportunity to study them. Eventually, she was invited to participate in the Polish-Mongolian Palaeontological Expeditions to the Gobi desert, and became an active, highly appreciated participant of all four expeditions” (Borsuk-Białynicka & Jakubowski, “In Memoriam: Teresa Maryańska”, Acta Palaeontologica, volume 64, number 4, 2019).

Maryańska’s first dinosaur research was on the ankylosaurs, and her magnum opus on their anatomy and taxonomy was published in 1977. She then worked on specimens of the pacycephalosaurs, protoceratopsians, and hadrosaurs, and oviraptors, and many of her discoveries were made while working closely with her colleague and friend Halszka Osmólska (1930-2008). She was also a co-author of several chapters of The Dinosauria, one of the most important scholarly reference works on dinosaurs, first published in 1990 and “unparalleled for its comprehensiveness at the time” (Borsuk-Białynicka).

First edition, first impression of Dinosaur, one of the earliest titles in the best-selling Eyewitness Books series, together with the first printing of the American edition, published in the same year. Copies of the first printings of the 1980s Eyewitness books are scarce, particularly in such beautiful condition.

The publisher Dorling Kindersley was founded in London 1974, and in the 1980s began taking advantage of new design technologies to radically revise the traditional page layouts of children’s books. As they described to Children’s Software Review in 1997, the goal was to “slow down the pictures and speed up the text”, allowing children to “experience information from their own particular point of view” (cited by Stringham, “The Efficacy of Small Multiples in the Visual Language of Instructional Designs”, Brigham Young University thesis, 2012). "What DK did—with almost revolutionary panache—was essentially to reinvent nonfiction books by breaking up the solid pages of gray type that had previously been their hallmark, reducing the text to bite-size, nonlinear nuggets that were then surrounded by pictures that did more than adorn—they also conveyed information. Usually full color, they were so crisply reproduced they seemed to leap off the page” (Cart, “Eyewitness Books: Putting the Graphic in Lexographic”, Booklist, October 15, 2002). There are now more than 100 Eyewitness Books, and more than 50 million copies have been sold in thirty-six languages.

The first Eyewitness Books were published in 1988, and Dinosaur appeared the following year, one of the first sixteen in the series and still in print today. Its authors are both prominent palaeontologists. Angela Milner, of the Natural History Museum in London, has done important work on archaeopteryx, providing evidence in the debate over whether it was a bird or dinosaur. David Norman is curator of vertebrate paleontology at Cambridge University’s Sedgwick Museum. In 2017 he and two other paleontologists made the case for a complete revaluation of early dinosaur evolution and taxonomy, arguing that the two main dinosaur clades were more closely related than previously understood.

An uncommon offprint announcing results from the important Polish-Mongolian Palaeontological Expeditions.

These expeditions to the Gobi, which were led by Zofia Kielan-Jaworowska between 1965 and 1971, resulted in the excavation of thirty-five tons of fossils. They “added greatly to our understanding of the diversity of dinosaurs. The material collected in those few years provided material for major portions of the careers of five or six Polish scientists” and “the scientific descriptions of dinosaurs that soon began to flow from the expeditions were almost exclusively written by Polish women, women who up to then had published on Paleozoic invertebrates” (Dodson, ”Polish Women in the Gobi – In Loving Memory of Halszka Osmólska”, American Paleontologist, Vol. 16, No. 3, Fall 2008). The authors of this piece, Teresa Maryańska (1937-2019) and Halszka Osmólska (1930-2008), were two of these specialists, who worked as a team for many years and became leaders in their field.

Osmólska has been described as “one of the most productive dinosaur paleontologists of her generation” and “a giant” in the field (Dodson). She graduated from the University of Warsaw in 1955, and spent most of her career at the Institute of Paleobiology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, where she served as director between 1984 and 1989 and also as editor of the Institute’s journal, Acta Palaeontologica. Osmólska “was responsible for the description of 15 genera of dinosaurs. She was solo author of four of these, and first author of two more. The remarkable team of Maryańska and Osmólska was responsible for naming eight genera. She was honored in the names of a basal archosaur, Osmolskina czatkowicensis (Borsuk-Białynicka & Evans, 2003) and two dinosaurs: the oviraptorosaur Citipati osmolskae (Clark et al., 2001), and most recently (June 2008) Velociraptor osmolskae (Godefroit et al., 2008). She was elected to honorary life membership in the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology in 2003” (Dodson). Osmólska was also an editor of the The Dinosauria, one of the most important scholarly reference works on dinosaurs, first published in 1990 and “unparalleled for its comprehensiveness at the time” (Borsuk-Białynicka & Jakubowski, “In Memoriam: Teresa Maryańska”, Acta Palaeontologica, volume 64, number 4, 2019).

Teresa Maryańska was associated with the Museum of the Earth at the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, serving as vice-director between 1976 and 2006. “Her research was initially on invertebrate palaeontology. Her thesis concerned the Bryozoa, but she was always interested in vertebrates and looked for an opportunity to study them. Eventually, she was invited to participate in the Polish-Mongolian Palaeontological Expeditions to the Gobi desert, and became an active, highly appreciated participant of all four expeditions” (Borsuk-Białynicka). Maryańska’s first dinosaur research was on the ankylosaurs, and her magnum opus on their anatomy and taxonomy was published in 1977. She then worked on specimens of the pacycephalosaurs, protoceratopsians, and hadrosaurs, and oviraptors. She was also a co-author of several chapters of The Dinosauria.

A rare, inscribed offprint by Halszka Osmólska (1930-2008), “one of the most productive dinosaur paleontologists of her generation” and “a giant” in the field (Dodson, ”Polish Women in the Gobi – In Loving Memory of Halszka Osmólska”, American Paleontologist, Vol. 16, No. 3, Fall 2008). Inscribed by the author on the upper cover using an abbreviated form of her signature, “from HOsm...”. This article reports on the authors’ observations of hadrosaur cranial structures, based on fossils collected from the Upper Cretaceous Nemegt Formation by the Polish-Mongolian Paleontological Expeditions as well as examination of the hadrosaurs in the collections of the USSR Academy of Sciences in Moscow.

Osmólska graduated from the University of Warsaw in 1955, and spent most of her career at the Institute of Paleobiology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, where she served as director between 1984 and 1989 and also as editor of the Institute’s journal, Acta Palaeontologica.

Osmólska was a member of the important Polish-Mongolian expeditions to the Gobi, which were led by Zofia Kielan-Jaworowska between 1965 and 1971 and resulted in the excavation of thirty-five tons of fossils. These excavations “added greatly to our understanding of the diversity of dinosaurs. The material collected in those few years provided material for major portions of the careers of five or six Polish scientists” and “the scientific descriptions of dinosaurs that soon began to flow from the expeditions were almost exclusively written by Polish women, women who up to then had published on Paleozoic invertebrates” (Dodson). Osmólska was one of these specialists, and much of her work on the Mongolian fossils was carried out in partnership with another prominent palaeontologist, Teresa Maryańska (1937-2019), the lead author of this piece.

Osmólska and Maryańska’s first major publication resulting from the Gobi expeditions was the discovery of Deinocheirus mirificus (’unusual horrible hand’), “a fossil collected during the 1965 field season at Altan Ula III in the Nemegt Basin. The find consisted of two nearly complete articulated forelimbs of a theropod of unprecedented size. The forelimbs were 2.4 meters (almost 8 feet) long. The claws on the three-fingered hand measured 323 mm in length (nearly 13 inches). A possible ornithomimosaur, the animal remains enigmatic decades later, pending further discoveries” (Dodson).

Over the course of her career, Osmólska “was responsible for the description of 15 genera of dinosaurs. She was solo author of four of these, and first author of two more. The remarkable team of Maryańska and Osmólska was responsible for naming eight genera. She was honored in the names of a basal archosaur, Osmolskina czatkowicensis (Borsuk-Białynicka & Evans, 2003) and two dinosaurs: the oviraptorosaur Citipati osmolskae (Clark et al., 2001), and most recently (June 2008) Velociraptor osmolskae (Godefroit et al., 2008). She was elected to honorary life membership in the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology in 2003” (Dodson). Osmólska was also an editor of the The Dinosauria, one of the most important scholarly reference works on dinosaurs, first published in 1990.

A rare, inscribed offprint by Halszka Osmólska (1930-2008), “one of the most productive dinosaur paleontologists of her generation” and “a giant” in the field (Dodson, ”Polish Women in the Gobi – In Loving Memory of Halszka Osmólska”, American Paleontologist, Vol. 16, No. 3, Fall 2008). Possibly inscribed by the author on the upper cover, “with compliments of H. Osmólska". This paper discusses the purpose of nasal glands in dinosaurs, and whether they were used to excrete salt, as in some bird species.

Osmólska graduated from the University of Warsaw in 1955, and spent most of her career at the Institute of Paleobiology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, where she served as director between 1984 and 1989 and also as editor of the Institute’s journal, Acta Palaeontologica.

Osmólska was a member of the important Polish-Mongolian expeditions to the Gobi, which were led by Zofia Kielan-Jaworowska between 1965 and 1971 and resulted in the excavation of thirty-five tons of fossils. These excavations “added greatly to our understanding of the diversity of dinosaurs. The material collected in those few years provided material for major portions of the careers of five or six Polish scientists” and “the scientific descriptions of dinosaurs that soon began to flow from the expeditions were almost exclusively written by Polish women, women who up to then had published on Paleozoic invertebrates” (Dodson). Osmólska was one of these specialists, and much of her work on the Mongolian fossils was carried out in partnership with another prominent palaeontologist, Teresa Maryańska (1937-2019).

Osmólska and Maryańska’s first major publication resulting from the Gobi expeditions was the discovery of Deinocheirus mirificus (’unusual horrible hand’), “a fossil collected during the 1965 field season at Altan Ula III in the Nemegt Basin. The find consisted of two nearly complete articulated forelimbs of a theropod of unprecedented size. The forelimbs were 2.4 meters (almost 8 feet) long. The claws on the three-fingered hand measured 323 mm in length (nearly 13 inches). A possible ornithomimosaur, the animal remains enigmatic decades later, pending further discoveries” (Dodson).

Over the course of her career, Osmólska “was responsible for the description of 15 genera of dinosaurs. She was solo author of four of these, and first author of two more. The remarkable team of Maryańska and Osmólska was responsible for naming eight genera. She was honored in the names of a basal archosaur, Osmolskina czatkowicensis (Borsuk-Białynicka & Evans, 2003) and two dinosaurs: the oviraptorosaur Citipati osmolskae (Clark et al., 2001), and most recently (June 2008) Velociraptor osmolskae (Godefroit et al., 2008). She was elected to honorary life membership in the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology in 2003”. Osmólska was also an editor of the The Dinosauria, one of the most important scholarly reference works on dinosaurs, first published in 1990.