Details
BARTHOLIN, Erasmus (1625-1698). Experimenta crystalli Islandici disdiaclastici quibus mira & insolita refractio detegitur. Copenhagen: Daniel Paulli, 1669.
4o (204 x 151 mm). Printer's engraved vignette on title-page, woodcut diagrams in text. (Some minor pale spotting on title and preliminaries.) Contemporary calf, spine gilt (spine ends repaired).
VERY RARE FIRST EDITION OF BARTHOLIN'S MAJOR CONTRIBUTION TO SCIENCE. "Erasmus Bartholin was the first to investigate double refraction of light in Iceland spar (calcite), whose remarkable refractive properties he explained in terms of the Cartesian theory of light" (Norman). He showed that both rays (solita and insolita) are produced by refraction and argued that double refraction could be explained in the Cartesian theory of light by assuming that there was a double set of "pores" in the spar. This phenomenon proved to be of great theoretical interest to both Huygens and Newton. Bartholin's rare work is important in the fields of crystallography, minerology, and optics. Burke, Origins of the science of crystals, pp. 67 and 136; Norman 124.
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VERY RARE FIRST EDITION OF BARTHOLIN'S MAJOR CONTRIBUTION TO SCIENCE. "Erasmus Bartholin was the first to investigate double refraction of light in Iceland spar (calcite), whose remarkable refractive properties he explained in terms of the Cartesian theory of light" (Norman). He showed that both rays (solita and insolita) are produced by refraction and argued that double refraction could be explained in the Cartesian theory of light by assuming that there was a double set of "pores" in the spar. This phenomenon proved to be of great theoretical interest to both Huygens and Newton. Bartholin's rare work is important in the fields of crystallography, minerology, and optics. Burke, Origins of the science of crystals, pp. 67 and 136; Norman 124.