L'HÔPITAL (L'HOSPITAL), (GUILLAUME FRANÇOIS ANTOINE DE). - FIRST TREATISE ON THE DIFFERENTIAL CALCULUS.

Analyse des infinite Petits. Suivie d'un nouveau Commentaire pour l'intelligence des endroits les plus difficiles de cet Ouvrage. Par l'Autheur du Guide des jeunes Mathématiciens dans l'étude des Lecons de Mathematique de M. l'Abbé de la Caille.

Avignon, Veuve Girard & Francois Seguin, 1768. 8vo. Contemp. full mottled calf. Wear to top of spine. Richly gilt spine, titlelabel with gilt lettering. (2),XXXI,380 pp. and 8 folded engraved plates. On verso of title-page a stamped exlibris. On inside frontcover an engraved exlibris "John Cookney". Internally clean, printed on good paper.

This edition of the first treatise on the differential calculus, first published 1696, is the first with the commentaries by the famous French astronomer Nicolas-Louis De Lacaille, taken from his noted "Leçons élémentaires de mathématiques".
"The Analyse des infiniment petits was the first textbook of the differential calculus. The existence of several commentaries on it - one by Varignon (1725) - attests to its popularity. The question of its intellectual ownership has been much debated. Jean Bernoulli, who is known to have instructed L’Hospital in the calculus about 1691, complained after L’Hospital’s death that he (Bernoulli) had not been given enough credit for his contributions. L’Hospital himself, in the introduction to his books, freely acknowledges his indebtedness to Leibniz and to the Bernoulli brothers. On the other hand, he states that he regards the foundations provided by him as his own idea, although they also have been credited by some to Jean Bernoulli. However, these foundations can be found, less explicitly, also in Leibniz, although Leibniz made it clear that he did not accept L’Hospital’s Platonistic views on the reality of infinitely small and infinitely large quantities."(DSB).

Order-nr.: 50313