Histoire de l’Acadmie Royale des Sciences

Paris: de L’Imprimerie Royale, 1740. Complete with errata’s and original blank leaves, two of three finely engraved frontispieces, chapter vignettes, ornamental head and tail pieces and 82 folding plates. Full mottled calf, rebacked, the corners a bit worn. Interior is lightly toned with some browning on the preliminaries and last leaves. Generally, this is an excellent set. First editions of these three volumes from a series published by the Academy of Sciences. It is a summary of the activities and inventions that have been made, and contains the most important discoveries of the time. These periodicals, which were at the forefront of scientific development during the Enlightenment, contain works produced by an elite class of French scientist for the years 1722, 1731 and 1740. Each volume provided an overview of advancements in math and science for each year, and the writings therein shaped the world’s understanding of physics, mathematics, astronomy, anatomy and other fields of science. They further provide invaluable historical data, such as meteorological and astrological records for each year.

The memoirs for 1722 include data recorded on both a lunar and solar eclipse, as well as other astronomical observations by Jacques Cassini (1677-1756), best know for completing his fathers work on determining the meridian of Paris. The distinguished astronomer provided further research on lunar eclipses in the memoirs of 1731, where he is in great company alongside distinguished mathematicians Alexis-Claude Clairaut (1713-1765), Pierre Bouguer (1698-1758), known for his work in physics, photometry and hydrography, and the foremost proponent of the Newtonian movement in France, Pierre de Maupertuis (1698-1759). Of special note in the 1731 memoirs is Maupertuis’s ballistic arithmetic, which was used to try to better understand the movement of the earth and its gravity. Too, an article by Clairaut on new formulas for finding the center of gravity. These articles contributed greatly to a better understanding of the earth’s shape and the mechanics of its rotation, particularly Bouguer’s essay on the tendency of objects set in motion to move in a curvilinear fashion. The 1740 edition contains Cassini De Thury’s De la Maridienne de Paris..., which was an important step in the process of mapping the shape of the earth. Cassini (1714-1784), representing the third generation of the distinguished family of astronomers, was the first to question


Picard’s measurements which had been used to map the Maridian of Paris. Clairaut’s essay on integral calculus in the same volume, which established the existence of an integrating factor for linear differential equations, was an important step in the history of mathematics, and Mairan’s treatise on reflection and refraction of light and the human eye was essential to the advancement of optics. Mairan (1678-1771) would set the foundation for optical theory with this treatise.