29        EULER, Leonhard (1707-1783). Mechanica sive motus scientia analytice. 2 volumes 4° (250x205 mm). [16], 480 (recte 488); [8] 500 pp. With an engraved vignette and 32 engraved folding plates. Contemporary boards. Binding rubbed, corners and edges chafed. Somewhat slightly dampstained. St. Petersburg, Academy of Sciences, 1736.                                  

First edition of Euler's first major publication, in which he introduced the use of analytical methods in mechanics instead of the geometrical methods of Newton and his followers.

"Mechanica is Euler's outline of a program of studies embracing every branch of science, involving a systematic application of analysis. It laid the foundations of analytical mechanics, the result of Euler's consideration of the motion produced by forces acting on both free and constrained points. It was also the first published work in which the number e appeared" (The Euler Archive).

Provenance: Theodor Friedrich (Fyodor Fyodorovich) Schubert (1789-1865), with his engraved armorial bookplate on front paste-down. Schubert, an honorary member of both the Academy of Sciences and Arts in St. Petersburg, was the son of the astronomer Friedrich Theodor v. Schubert and grandfather of the Russian mathematician Sofia Kovalevskaya.

References: Roberts-Trent 103 f.; Honeyman 1058; Eneström 15-16; DSB IV, 479 f. 

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