BOSE, GEORG MATTHIAS.

Observationes astronomicae, quas ex praescripto Acad. Scient. Reg. Paris. Habuit Wittembergae.

Leipzig, Grosse & Gleditsch, 1753. 4to. Contemp. full vellum. Faint handwritten title on spine. Two small stamps on titlepage. In: "Nova Acta Eruditorum Anno MDCCLII". Occassional brownspotting. The entire volume offered. Pp. 466-480. [Entire issue: (6), 720, (26) pp + 6 plates].

First printing of Bose's paper on astronomical observations of the moon.
"Bose, a merchant's son, was educated at the University of Leipzig, where he concentrated on philosophy, mathematics, and languages. In 1727 he received the M.A. and joined the philosophy faculty as a junior lecturer (Assessor) in mathematics and physics. In 1738 he accepted the chair of natural philosophy (Naturlehre) at the University of Wittenberg, where he remained until 1760, when the Prussians carried him off to Magdeburg as a hostage of war." (DSB).

"The Wittenberg professor Georg Matthias Bose was a main actor in the transformation of electricity from an academic branch of natural investigation into a fashionable amusement. If, during the 1730s, both Stephen Gray at the Royal Society of London and Charles Du Chisternay Dufay at the Académie des Sciences in Paris devoted themselves to the investigation of the electric matter, it was Bose and other "Saxon virtuosi" that, as the Gentleman's Magazineacknowledged in 1745, made electricity a subject à-la-mode, with "princes willing to see this new fire that man produced from himself, and which did not descend from heaven." (Bertucci, Therapeutic Attractions: Early Applications of Electricity to the Art of Healing, P. 271).

Many other papers by influential contemporary mathematicians, philosophers and historians are to be found in the present volume.

Order-nr.: 45478