CATALOGUE DE LIVRES RARES FINE BOOKS - Camille Sourget

Very scarce first edition of this founding text of non-Euclidian geometry.
« The revolution in our conception of the nature of mathematics can be traced back to the explicit formulation
of the first non-Euclidian geometries early in the nineteenth century.
Lobatchewsky published the first non-Euclidean geometry […]. In Lobatchewsky’s geometry an infinity of
parallels can be drawn through a given point that never intersect a given straight line.
His fundamental paper was read to his colleagues in Kazan in 1826 but he did not publish the results until
1829-30 when a series of five papers appeared in the Kazan University Courier, the first of which bore the title
cited above, ‘The Origins of Geometry’. He amplified his findings (still in Russian) in 1836-8 under the title
‘New Elements of Geometry, with a Complete Theory of Parallels’. In 1840 he published a brief summary in
Berlin under the title Geometrische Untersuchungen zur Theorie der Parallellinien”. (PMM).
The present work is the earliest obtainable book-edition presenting the new geometry.
It is illustrated with 2 folding plates of geometrical figures.
The present copy is preserved in its original green printed wrappers.
ABPC doesn’t list any copy of this work.
Lobachevski’s memoir printed in 1829-1830 by the Kazan University was sold by Christie’s New York on
the 29 th of October 1998 for 405 000 $ (about 2 200 000 F at the time).