拍品 180
180
EULER (LÉONHARD): THEORIA MOTUS LUNAE exhibens omnes eius inaequalitates, [colophon: Berlin, officina Michaelis], impensis Academiae Imperialis Scientiarum, St. Petersburg, 1753, 4to, FIRST EDITION, folding engraved plate (title browned and waterstained at outer margin, the plate waterstained at upper margin and spotted, some spotting and light browning of text), 19th century half calf. [Brunet II, 1093; Sotheran, Second Supplement, 3098; Honeyman 1068]

細節
EULER (LÉONHARD): THEORIA MOTUS LUNAE exhibens omnes eius inaequalitates, [colophon: Berlin, officina Michaelis], impensis Academiae Imperialis Scientiarum, St. Petersburg, 1753, 4to, FIRST EDITION, folding engraved plate (title browned and waterstained at outer margin, the plate waterstained at upper margin and spotted, some spotting and light browning of text), 19th century half calf. [Brunet II, 1093; Sotheran, Second Supplement, 3098; Honeyman 1068]

拍品專文

Léonhard Euler (17078-83) was the most prolific mathematician in history, unsurpassed as an algorist, and probably the greatest man of science Switzerland has produced. In his time, one outstanding problem in mathematical research also chanced to coincide with what was probably the first practical problem of the age -- navigation and control of the seas. 'In such a practical enterprise the Moon offers a particularly vicious problem, that of three bodies attracting one another according to the Newtonian law ... Euler was the first to evolve a calculable solution for the problem of the Moon ("the lunar theory") ... one of the most difficult in the whole range of mathematics. Euler did not solve it, but his method of approximative calculation was sufficiently practical to enable an English computer to calculate the lunar tables for the British Admiralty. For this the computer received #5,000, and Euler was voted a bonus of #300 for the method ... All the complicated analysis was done entirely in his head,' after he had become totally blind. (Bell, I p. 155ff.)