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All our Scientific books

Are you passionate about the history of science?
You will certainly find a book for you among our rare books and manuscripts of Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry or Natural Sciences.
The famous names in science are present on our shelves: Euclid, Newton, Darwin, Pascal, Lavoisier and also those who have participated in scientific progress.

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Photo [MANUSCRIT] MAHOT, Maurice. 

Original manuscript of an unpublished botanical treatise by a learned scholar from Nantes.
It presents botanical concepts as well as the classifications of Linnaeus and Tournefort. This manuscript, nearly 200 pages long, is written on the verso of the plates from Buc'hoz’s Flore Lorraine.
All plates are also annotated with details on plant names, their classification according to Linnaeus and Tournefort, and their medicinal uses—together forming a true pharmacopoeia.
These 187 plates were intended to illustrate Buc'hoz’s Traité historique des plantes qui croissent dans la Lorraine et les Trois-Évêchés, published in ten octavo volumes between 1762 and 1770. The plates, originally issued separately in installments and designed to be folded and bound in octavo, are gathered here in a single folio volume.
Buc'hoz, known for the beauty of his plates, had solicited financial support from fellow countrymen and botany enthusiasts for the production of these engravings. Thus, at the bottom of almost every plate, one finds the coat of arms and name of the sponsor who funded it.
Maurice Mahot, the author of this manuscript, sponsored plate 152.
While biographical information on Maurice Mahot “the elder” (1745–1810), a royal counselor, civil and criminal judge at the présidial, alderman (1777), and deputy mayor of Nantes (1779), offers little indication of an interest in natural sciences and botany, the same cannot be said of his son, Maurice Mahot “the younger” (1774–1842), a doctor of medicine and scholar who published several books on medicine and lexicography.
The annotations by the son—a physician—on the plates funded by the father—a botany enthusiast—explain the numerous pharmaceutical and medical recipes found in the work.
Another collector has left his name on the title page: Silas Boucher de la Ville Jossy, a member of a prominent Nantes family in the mid-19th century.
A fascinating manuscript, still largely unexplored, of exceptional character, both for the beauty of its annotated plates and for its content, which intertwines botanical classification and pharmacopoeia.

Photo CLAIRAUT, Alexis. 

First edition of the tables of the Moon resulting from the calculations of Alexis Clairaut on the problem of the three bodies.

"Between 1747 and 1754, three of the greatest mathematicians of their time, Euler, D'Alembert and Clairaut, oppose a common project: to develop new mathematical methods in order to solve the complex problem posed by the movement of the Moon, submitted at the same time to the gravitational attraction of the Earth and the Sun. [...] But the stake is not only mathematical, it became indeed urgent, for the needs of the astronomical navigation, for the safety of the roads maritime and commercial, and for the protection of crews to finally have tables giving the ecliptic longitude of the Moon with sufficient precision in order to make the lunar distance method applicable at sea. " (Guy Boistel. Beyond the problem of the three bodies: Alexis Clairaut and his nautical tables of the Moon (1751-1765) Proceedings of the congress on the history of science and technology, Poitiers, May 20-22, 2004).

The stake both scientific and commercial explains why Clairaut in the introduction of his tables indicates the precise chronology of the disclosure to the public of his mathematical discoveries. Although proposing the most accurate mathematical solution of the problem of the three bodies, it will be preceded by the German Mayer who publishes in 1753 his tables established in an empirical way. And it is Mayer who will be awarded by the Board of Longitude the prize of 3000 pounds sterling to the chagrin of Clairaut.

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