A Treatise of Algebra, Both Historical and Practical.

WALLIS, John.

Item Number: 116578

London: John Playford for Richard Davis, 1685.

First edition of Wallis’s landmark work on Algebra, with the rare original frontispiece. Folio, bound in contemporary calf, engraved frontispiece, 10 engraved plates, woodcut diagrams throughout. This example is from the family library of James Alexander, one of the original members of the American Philosophical Society. In very good condition with light toning. Wing W-613. Jacqueline Stedall, A Discourse Concerning Algebra: English Algebra to 1685. An exceptional example with noted provenance.

"The first substantial history of the subject" (Stedall). A Puritan minister who ended up working as a codebreaker for the Parliamentary Army, Wallis was awarded a chair of Geometry after Royalist mathematicians were purged from Oxford. With this work “concentrating on English advances, Wallis was telling a story that had not been told before and has hardly been addressed since" (Stedall). This work is unusual in its coverage of both the history of algebra, and the exposition of its use. The last 28 chapters are dedicated to methods of exhaustion and indivisibles, the building blocks of calculus, as well as the method of infinite series. This was Wallis' way of making sure that the young Isaac Newton's still unpublished findings were set to print, fearing that others on the continent might publish Newton's work before they were published in England. Wallis attended Cambridge intending to be a doctor, but found that he was more interested in mathematics. He entered the priesthood after receiving his master's degree. His parliamentarian politics led him into cryptography, de-ciphering royalist coded messages, and he was asked by Leibniz to teach cryptography in Hanover. He refused, feeling that the knowledge could be used by foreign powers against England. In addition to mathematics, he also wrote treatises on theology, logic, grammar and philosophy. Wing W-613.