"PERHAPS THE UGLIEST OF ALL FAMOUS SCIENTIFIC DISPUTES"
(MAUPERTUIS & KOENIG)
Lettre d'un Inconnu à un Inconnu à l'occasion de la fameuse dispute entre Mr. Maupertius et Mr. Koenig (+) Academie des Graces Par Mr. L. Le Me***.
(No place, nor printer), 1753 & Paris, Aux depens de la Societe, 1755.
8vo. In contemporary half calf with four raised bands with gilt lettering and ornamentation to spine. Traces from old paper-label pasted on to top of spine. Light wear to extremities, boards with scratches. Previous owner's name in contemporary hand to title-page. Internally nice and clean. [Academie... :] XVI, 142 pp. [Lettre d'un Inconnu... :] 44 pp.
Rare first edition of this work related to the 'König affair,' the renowned controversy over the principle of least action, described as "perhaps the ugliest of all the famous scientific disputes" (DSB VII: 442). The main figures in this highly publicized affair, which led to numerous pamphlets supporting one side or the other, were the mathematicians and scientists P. L. Moreau de Maupertuis (1698-1759), then head of the Prussian Academy of Sciences, and Johann Samuel Koenig (1712-1757), a member of this Academy. In 1751 Koenig presented his "Law of least Action". The law states that the kinetic energy of a system of mass points is equal to the sum of the kinetic energy of the motion of the system relative to the center of gravity and of the kinetic energy of the total mass of the system considered as a whole, which moves as the center of gravity of the system.
"While still in Franeker, Koenig wrote the draft of his important essay on the principle of least action, which was directed against Maupertuis. The controversy touched off by this work, which was published in March 1751, resulted in perhaps the ugliest of all the famous scientific disputes. Its principal figures were Koenig, Maupertuis, Euler, Frederick II, and Voltaire; and, as is well known, it left an unseemly stain on Euler’s otherwise untarnished escutcheon. The quarrel occupied Koenig’s last years almost completely; moreover, he had been ill for several years before it started. Koenig emerged the moral victor from this affair, in which all the great scientists of Europe—except Maupertuis and Euler—were on his side. The later finding of Kabitz testifies to Koenig’s irreproachable character."(DSB).
Order-nr.: 61312
DKK 7.500,00