Beschreibung:

COPERNICUS, Nicolaus (1473-1543). De lateribus et angulis triangulorum, tum planorum rectilineorum tum Sphaericorum, libellus eruditissimus & utilissimus... Additus est Canon semissium subtensarum rectarum linearum in Circulo. Wittenberg: Johann Lufft, 1542. The very rare first edition of Copernicus's first scientific publication, containing the first appearance of any part of De Revolutionibus – the book that "set the course for the modern world by its effective destruction of the anthropocentric view of the universe" (PMM). Only three other copies have sold at auction in the past 40 years (RBH/ABPC). Apart from Copernicus' translation of Greek verses by Theophylact Simocatta into Latin prose, which was published in Cracow in 1509, this is the only work published by Copernicus before the death-bed publication of De Revolutionibus . It comprises the section on plane and spherical trigonometry that appeared in De Revolutionibus and contains the first publication of Rheticus's trigonometric tables. The book was seen through the press by Rheticus, and includes a preface by Rheticus addressed to Georg Hartmann (1489-1545), the geographer and mathematician in Nuremberg. Rheticus himself added the table of half-chords subtended in a circle, which became the first table to give the cosine directly. Adams C-2601; Baranowski, Bibliografia Kopernikowska 2; Burmeister, Rheticus 25; Stillwell, Science 160; Zinner 1795; cf. Printing and the Mind of Man 70. Small quarto (200 x 161mm). Title-page within woodcut border, woodcut diagrams in the text (title with light soiling and staining; faint dampstain in the top margin of the last two gatherings, sometimes reaching into the text). Bound later in an early manuscript leaf over pasteboard (spine neatly repaired; endpapers renewed; fore-edge of the lower board with an early repair in vellum); modern blue quarter morocco clamshell case.