(Brahe, Tycho — Christian Severin Lumborg) | Astronomia Danica, Amsterdam, 1622, an important association copy

(Brahe, Tycho) — Christian Severin Lumborg

Astronomia Danica. Amsterdam: Guiljelmus I. Caesius, 1622

First edition. An important association copy, with the signature of Richard Bentley and stamp of Henry Cavendish.

This work should have more correctly been attributed to Tycho Brahe "as the tables of celestial movements were begun under his direction, and executed after a treatise by him which had been copied by Longomontanus" (Sotheran/Zeitlinger). Rymer's work was chiefly devoted to trigonometry; however this work is famous on account of his description of a world system similar to Tycho Brahe's—and even more advanced than Brahe's as it posits the earth's rotation. Brahe, whom Rymers had visited, charged that Rymers had stolen the whole idea from him.

This copy is remarkable for its association with two great eighteenth-century scientists. It bears the ownership inscription of Richard Bentley, the eminent Cambridge scholar and Fellow of the Royal Society who was responsible for the publication of the second edition of Newton's Principia. The verso of the title also bears the distinctive inkstamp of Henry Cavendish, the eccentric English physicist and chemist, notable for discovering hydrogen, whose "place in British natural philosophy is as the first after Newton to possess mathematical and experimental talents at all comparable to Newton's. In intellectual stature Cavendish was without peer in eighteenth-century British natural philosophy" (Dictionary of Scientific Biography).

4to (237 x 149 mm). Title-pages to first part and appendix, both with woodcut device, Numerous woodcut diagrams and tables; light browning. Early calf; rebacked and recornered, endleaves renewed, rubbed, upper board detached.

REFERENCES

Houzeau and Lancaster 2926; USTC 1012851; STCN 081634811

PROVENANCE

N. Johnson (ownership inscription to title) — Richard Bentley F.R.S. (ownership inscription to title) — Henry Cavendish ( inkstamp to verso of title) — Robert S. Dunham (acquired in 1948: pencil acquisition note to front pastedown; Sotheby's, New York, 11 December 1993, lot 648)