Boscovich (Roger Joseph)

Philosopiae Naturalis Theoria redacta, FIRST EDITION, second printing, woodcut ornaments, 4 folding engraved plates of diagrams, title in black and red, light browning, a little dampstaining, intermittent foxing throughout, erased library stamp to title, contemporary mottled calf, spine gilt tooled in compartments, a.e.r., marbled endpapers, [Poggendorff I, 246; Riccardi I, 1870, 53], 4to, Officina Libraria Kaliwodiana, Vienna, 1759.

*** The major work of the Dalmatian Jesuit mathematician and astronomer, and one of the fundamental books in the history of scientific thought which marked 'the birth of atomic physics' (‘Printing and the Mind of Man’). Boscovich's atomic theory arose from an attempt to build a comprehensive physics based on the ideas of Newton and Leibniz, and to go beyond both to produce new results. The success of the ‘Theoria’ was immediate and widespread. It was highly influential on British physicists: Priestley, Robinson, Faraday, Clerk Maxwell, Lord Kelvin, J. J. Thompson, and Niels Bohr.