St John’s College Aa.1.31-33 (James 488-90)

Karl Weierstrass, Lectures on the theory of maxima and minima. German, 1890 or earlier

Karl Weierstrass (1815-97): ‘Theorie der Maxima und Minima sowie der Variationsrechnung, ausgearbeitet nach Vorlesungen des Herrn Prof. Dr C. Weierstrass’. In 27 chapters, through three volumes. According to an accompanying letter from A[ugustus] E[dward] H[ough] Love (1863-1940), Fellow of St John’s College, to the Librarian, J. Bass Mullinger, 21 May 1890, tipped in at the flyleaf of vol. 1, these lectures embodied ‘the most recent researches in this branch of mathematics and can only be had in this form, and that rarely’. Weierstrass’s Mathematische werke were published in 7 vols, Berlin, 1894-1927.

Manuscript extra information

240x190 mm. 430 fos, numbered through the three vols (contemporary foliation). Presented in 1890 by five Fellows of the College (plates inside each front cover), who had jointly paid for the copy. From Love’s letter of 21 May 1890 (above) it appears that the five were Love himself, Robert Forsyth Scott (1849-1933), Joseph Larmor (1857-1942), John Brill (b. 1858) and Henry Frederick Baker (1866-1956).

A single, small hand; a clean copy. Paper, written on the recto only. Half bound, marbled paper on boards: the spine title in gold letters: ‘Maxima und Minima / Weierstrass’. ‘Bound [in Cambridge] by Stoakley, late Hawes’, c. 1890 (stamp on flyleaves in each volume).