Name: Auction: McIan, Robert Ronald The Clans of the Scottish Highlands
Brand: Lyon & Turnbull
Price: 1500 GBP
Availability: InStock

James Stirling, one of the foremost mathematicians of eighteenth-century Europe and a protégé of Sir Isaac Newton, played a pivotal role in the Newtonian revolution in mathematics. Renowned for his contributions to infinitesimal calculus and infinite series, he gives his name to two major discoveries in Stirling’s formula and the Stirling numbers. &nbsp;Stirling’s principal work, the Methodus Differentialis&nbsp;(1730), is present in the library in three remarkable forms: his holograph manuscript, his personally corrected first edition, and a first edition in English with autograph letters from the translator. His notebooks, covering subjects from infinite series to the figure of the earth and ancient weights and measures, are complemented by a selection of landmark works by his contemporaries, including a large-paper copy of Newton’s Principia Mathematica, a first edition of Newton’s Analysis&nbsp;Per Quantitatum&nbsp;series, fluxiones, ac differentias, and a first edition of Colin Maclaurin’s Treatise on Fluxions&nbsp;(to which Stirling contributed), alongside presentation copies of works by Brook Taylor, Abraham de Moivre and Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis. The library also contains a spectacular collection of letters to Stirling from peers including Leonhard Euler, Nicolaus Bernoulli, and Gabriel Cramer. A selection of scientific instruments, believed to have been used by Stirling, completes this extraordinary collection.Buyer's Guide:&nbsp;

Cathy Tait | Head of Books & Manuscripts | Lyon & Turnbull Auctioneers

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The Library of James Stirling, Mathematician Auction

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… With Accompanying Description and Historical Memoranda of Character, Mode of Life, etc. etc. London: Willis and Sotheran, 1857. Second edition, 2 volumes, folio (36.4 x 25.4cm), original red quarter morocco, spines gilt in compartments, covers with elaborate overall gilt decoration incorporating large centrepieces of the royal arms of Scotland, all edges gilt, 72 hand-coloured lithographic plates of Highland dress, 2 chromolithographic heraldic plates, bookplates of Archibald Stirling, joints and tips rubbed, gutta percha perishing with several plates detached or detaching, a few plates soiled and with evidence of removal, mounting (with adhesive residue verso) and reinsertion, occasional light marginal spotting elsewhere [Tooley 323]