Byrne's Euclid, Einstein Offprints, and Publishers' Bindings to Auction

Of the 138 lots covering the history of science at PBA Galleries' August 28 auction are 18 related to Albert Einstein with 16 offprints presented to this son Hans on topics including aspects of General Relativity, early work on Unified Field Theory and the Canal Rays experiment.

Also notable is an unpublished autograph note to Nobel Prize winner Max von Laue on Einstein’s academic calling card which may reference the proposed Canal Rays experiment.

The seminal offprint of Einstein’s debate with Willem De Sitter on the shape of the universe is complemented with several inscribed early offprints by De Sitter concerning celestial mechanics as well as his 1934 On the Foundations of the Theory of Relativity, with Special Reference to the Theory of the Expanding Universe.

Also going under the hammer is Oliver Byrne’s The First Six Books of the Elements of Euclid from 1847 (estimate: $10,000 - $15,000) which uses four-color printing as a teaching aid, transforming the geometric references into visual concepts to demonstrate proofs rather than using letters to label angles/edges, a forerunner to today's information graphics.

Among the other lots is a first edition of James Stirling’s Lineae Tertii from 1717, very possibly the author’s own copy. Stirling's work is the first proof and expansion of Isaac Newton's classification of cubic curves, and they subsequently became associates and correspondents.

Finally, there are 56 lots of from the extensive Morris-Levin Collection of publishers’ bindings. These lavishly illustrated bindings include 34 Kate Greenaway Almanaks (estimate: $2,000 - $3,000), Gustav Doré illustrated Bible ($1,200 - $1,800), and volumes illustrated by Aubrey Beardsley and Arthur Rackham.