Beschreibung:

[EINSTEIN, Albert (1879-1955)]. Three scientific text books owned by Einstein. Highly important association copies, comprising Gauss's groundbreaking work on potential theory, with scientific annotations in Einstein's hand, Lavoisier and Laplace on heat, and Weyl's Das Kontinuum , the latter two with a further association with Michele Besso. Gauss's work, one of his series of important papers on terrestrial magnetism, 'was the first systematic treatment of potential theory as a mathematical topic ... and reached a standard of rigour that remained unsurpassed for more than a century' (DSB). Weyl's Das Kontinuum is a classic work on the conceptual problem of the continuum – the set of all real numbers: Einstein had read the work in proofs, and wrote to Weyl on 18 April 1918 with a detailed response: ‘I constantly admire anew the beauty and elegance of your derivations’, although he nevertheless took issue with a section in which Weyl derives static spherically symmetric solutions of Einstein’s field equations (see the Collected Papers , vol. 8B, ed. Schulmann, Kox, Janssen, Illy, document 511). The two papers on heat by Lavoisier and Laplace recount their famous investigations of calorimetry in the early 1780s. The copies of Weyl and Lavoisier/Laplace both have associations with Einstein's close friend Michele Besso (1873-1955): Besso worked in detail with Einstein (in 1912-1913 especially) on the early development of the general theory of relativity, which drew in important ways on the work of both Gauss and Weyl. GAUSS, Carl Friedrich (1777-1855). Allgemeine Lehrsätze in Beziehung auf die im verkehrten Verhältnisse der Quadrats der Entfernung wirkenden Anziehungs- un Abstossungs-Kräfte . Leipzig: W. Engelmann, published in the series Ostwald's Klassiker der exacten Wissenschaften. Nr. 2 , 1889. Octavo (195 x 125mm). Original grey printed wrappers (extremities rubbed). Provenance : Albert Einstein (his autograph scientific annotations in pencil in three places, pp. 4, 6 and 10, one including a diagram – a further pencil annotation on p.42, perhaps by another hand); and by direct descent to the present owner. LAVOISIER, Antoine-Laurent (1743-1794) and Pierre-Simon-LAPLACE (1749-1827). Zwei Abhundlungen über die Wärme . Leipzig: W. Engelmann, published in the series Ostwald's Klassiker der exacten Wissenschaften. Nr. 40 , 1892. Octavo (195 x 125mm). Original grey printed wrappers (small light stain to upper cover, extremities rubbed). Provenance : Giovanni Logar (Gorizia bookseller's label with date 1 February 1911) [– very likely therefore first acquired by Michele Besso, who lived in Gorizia, near Trieste, from 1910 to 1915] – Albert Einstein, and by direct descent to the present owner. WEYL, Hermann (1885-1955). Das Kontinuum. Kritische Untersuchungen über die Grundlagen der Analysis . Leipzig: Veit & Comp., 1918. Octavo (232 x 152mm). Original grey printed wrappers (detached, worn and chipped). Provenance : Michele Besso (ownership inscription on title ‘Ing. M. A. Besso’) – scientific annotations in an unidentified hand on the inside front wrapper in blue ink (perhaps by Besso) – Albert Einstein, and by direct descent to the present owner.