A LANDMARK IN MATHEMATICS AND MECHANICS

LAGRANGE, (LA GRANGE), JOSEPH LOUIS.

Analytische Mechanik aus dem Französischen mit einigen Anmerkungen und erläuternden Zusätzen von Friedrich Wilhelm August Murhard.

Götingen, Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1797. 4to. Contemp. hcalf. Gilt spine. Titlelabel with gilt lettering. A paperlabel pasted on top of spine. Stamps on title-page. XX,573,(1) pp. Faint browning to a few leaves, otherwise clean and fine.

First German edition of this milestone work in applied mathematics (Mecanique Analitique, 1788) in which Lagrange regarded mechanics as a geometry of four dimensions and here set down the principle of virtual velocities as applied to mechanics. The work can lay claim today to be "one of the outstanding landmarks in the history of both mathematics and mechanics" (Sarton).

"This is the first textbook to treat theoretical mechanics in a purely analytic way. Its mathematical importence stems mainly from the application of Lagrange's new formalization of the calculus of variations, and its significance for rational mechanics from the fact that it summarizes, for the first time in a logically coherent way, the conformity the newtonian and continental mechanics of the 18th century on the basis of general variational principles."(Helmut Pulte in "Landmark Writings in Western mathematics 1640-1940).

Horblit, 61 ("Discovery of the general equations of motions of any system of bodies"). - Dibner, 112 (French edition)

Order-nr.: 51168