Milestones of Science Books

HAÜY, René Just.

Traité de Minéralogie.

Paris: Louis, 1801.

1st Edition. Hardcover. Very Good. Item #002537

Four text volumes, 8vo (198 x 126 mm) and one atlas volume, oblong 4to (226 x 249 mm). [4], lvi, 494, [2]; [4], 617 [1], [2]; [4], 588 [2]; [4], 592 [2] pp, including half-titles and errata slips in each volume. Atlas volume [8], 10, [2] pp and 86 engraved plates. Bound in contemporary half mottled calf, spines elaborately tooled in gilt, red and green gilt morocco lettering pieces (little wear to extremities, corners scuffed and bumped, upper spine of vol. I and lower spine of vol. IV repaired). Little age-toning and very minor occasional spotting in text, faint dampstaining to blank margin of title-page and few leaves in vol. IV. The plates clean and virtually unfoxed. Provenance: signed by the publisher beneath the "Extrait du Decret concernant les Contrefacteurs" on the verso of the half-title in volume I. All in all a fine, crisp and clean copy, rarely found in uniform binding of the atlas and text volumes as here. ----

Roller-G. I, 521; Honeyman 1627; Hoover 391; En Francais dans le texte 176; DSB VI, p.178. - FIRST EDITION. In 1801, Haüy published "his main work, Traité de Minéralogie, the first volume of which presented his crystal theory; in the three subsequent volumes, he expounded his system of mineral classification." (DSB). In this work, he revised the nomenclature of minerals as well as describing his discovery of the geometrical law of crystallization. This is the man who truly founded and developed the science of crystallography and, as Adams says, was simple, modest, a lover of learning, whose attention was directed to the study of mineralogy almost by chance. In handling a group of calcite crystals at the home of a friend, Hauy accidentally dropped them. When he re-examined the broken prism he noticed a new form, bounded by faces as smooth and shining as the original. "A new light broke upon the subject" (Hoover).

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