Newton, Isaac — [Albert Einstein & Roman Vishniac]

4to (244 x 190 mm). Privilege leaf, half-title, title printed in black and red, with numerous in-text diagrams, advertisement at end; modern morocco to style, spine gilt in 6 compartments. Scattered minor foxing and browning, engraved frontispiece portrait by George Vertue from the painting by I. Vanderbank supplied, small loss to lower corner of p. 341 not affecting text, extremities a bit rubbed, hinges just starting, recased. 

Albert Einstein (bookplate) — Roman Vishniac (bookplate)

See PMM 161

4to (244 x 190 mm). Privilege leaf, half-title, title printed in black and red, with numerous in-text diagrams, advertisement at end; modern morocco to style, spine gilt in 6 compartments. Scattered minor foxing and browning, engraved frontispiece portrait by George Vertue from the painting by I. Vanderbank supplied, small loss to lower corner of p. 341 not affecting text, extremities a bit rubbed, hinges just starting, recased.
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A SUPERB ASSOCIATION COPY OF NEWTON'S LANDMARK BOOK — WITH THE BOOKPLATES OF BOTH ALBERT EINSTEIN AND ROMAN VISHNIAC.

The third edition of "the greatest work in the history of science" (PMM), last to be published during the author's lifetime, and the basis for all subsequent editions. A cornerstone treatise on dynamics and gravitation, the Principia explains the phenomena described by Newton's predecessors (Copernicus, Galilei, Kepler) by elucidating the mathematical laws underlying them. At the urging of Edmond Halley, secretary to the Royal Society, Newton set about to prove that Kepler's law of planetary motion would cause a planet to orbit elliptically around the Sun. Newton established the mathematical bases for the law of inertia and the mechanics of fluids, including the effect of bodies moving through resistant fluids.

The Principia explained a system of the universe that, once established, was unchallenged until the twentieth century ushered in quantum theory and the theories of relativity, and essentially marks the beginning of modern physics. Einstein himself remarked that it was "perhaps the greatest intellectual stride that it has ever been granted to any man to make". We can trace a direct line from Newtownian physics to special and then general relativity, marking this association copy as a fascinating object related to our developing understanding of the universe from the eighteenth century to present. Moving from physics to photography — Roman Vishniac was a Russian-American photographer who famously photographed Einstein in his study in Princeton in 1942.