Isaac Newton text is the most expensive science book sold

Science texts aren’t normally top earners at auctions, but Christie’s just proved that there are major exceptions to this rule. The auction house has sold a first edition of Isaac Newton’s 1687 masterpiece, Principia Mathematica, for just over $3.7 million — the most expensive science book sold to date. It was originally estimated to sell for no more than $1.5 million, but its rarity likely helped drive the price up. This is a rare continental Europe edition, with only 80 copies published versus the 400 for Britain.

It’s not the rarest. That honor goes to Newton’s original manuscript, which the Royal Society (Newton’s academic home for much of his life) is likely to keep for as long as possible. Another copy bound in similar material went for a relatively modest $2.5 million back in 2013.

To call Principia Mathematica important would be an understatement. It’s the book where Newton sets out his laws of motion, including gravity. Many of the concepts outlined in the title would be cornerstones of physics for centuries (including today), and wouldn’t be significantly questioned until the 20th century through relativity and quantum physics. They formed the basis of industrial breakthroughs, and helped explain or refine key astronomy concepts that we now take for granted: the elliptical orbits of planets, tidal effects and even the not-quite-spherical shape of the Earth. The very fact that you can read this article partly explains why Principia fetched a high price — the technology you’re using might not exist if it weren’t for Newton’s findings.

https://www.engadget.com/2016/12/15/isaac-newton-text-is-most-expensive-science-book/

I wonder who bought it, probably some academic establishment no doubt.

Peak Warming Man said:

I wonder who bought it, probably some academic establishment no doubt.

It wasn’t me, so that thins down the possibilities.

sibeen said:

Peak Warming Man said:

I wonder who bought it, probably some academic establishment no doubt.

It wasn’t me, so that thins down the possibilities.

Count me out, too.

“Even so, Christie’s expected the goat-skin-covered book to bring in between $1 million and $1.5 million, but the unnamed bidder bought it for nearly four times that value at $3,719,500.”

http://www.livescience.com/57229-isaac-newton-book-sold-breaks-record.html

That is indeed impressive.

Until now the most expensive science book I’ve heard of was RuleKid2’s Yr 10 science text book, which cost >$90 and was not opened once during yr 10 Science.

Rule 303 said:

That is indeed impressive.

Until now the most expensive science book I’ve heard of was RuleKid2’s Yr 10 science text book, which cost >$90 and was not opened once during yr 10 Science.

I was lucky with year 12 biology.. my teacher wrote the text book so we got them cheap

stumpy_seahorse said:

I was lucky with year 12 biology.. my teacher wrote the text book so we got them cheap

It baffles the imagination that a book can be so valuable yet go unused.

Rule 303 said:

That is indeed impressive.

Until now the most expensive science book I’ve heard of was RuleKid2’s Yr 10 science text book, which cost >$90 and was not opened once during yr 10 Science.

you can resell.. still in it’s original wrapper

I’ve got a few old books, not many more than 100 years old though. Not in good condition. Wife’s father has an encyclopedia from the 1890s, which is an interesting read.

The most recent old good acquisition is a marine engineering book that goes into the detailed design of paddle steamers. I actually needed that information for some CSIRO work.

One of my favourite old science books is “A treasury of science” from 1943. It contains reprints of parts of all the great scientific publications up til then. Papers by Copernicus, Galileo, Jeans, Eddington, Newton, Curie, Haldane, Huxley, Darwin, Gray. Also a paper about Freud’s work.

Even has three articles on the future of man and science, including predictions of the future written in 1927 about what the world would be like 250 years from then.

mollwollfumble said:

One of my favourite old science books is “A treasury of science” from 1943. It contains reprints of parts of all the great scientific publications up til then. Papers by Copernicus, Galileo, Jeans, Eddington, Newton, Curie, Haldane, Huxley, Darwin, Gray. Also a paper about Freud’s work.

Even has three articles on the future of man and science, including predictions of the future written in 1927 about what the world would be like 250 years from then.

And did they “get it” largely correct?

Probably ONP bought it so they can burn it

well it wasn’t me.

I’d have to win lotto or something first.

Got me thinking.

What science book would be the second most expensive? Third?

mollwollfumble said:

Got me thinking.

What science book would be the second most expensive? Third?

These are sale prices. There would be many books that are quite literary priceless.

There’s a brand new book of rays (of the fish kind) of the world published by CSIRO for $160.

If you added up the first editions (Hardback) of the ten volumes in the Landau and Lifshitz “Course of Theoretical Physics” published between 1940 and 1979 then you could start talking real money. Unfortunately, the first editions are in Russian.

Science books that are famous (eg. http://discovermagazine.com/2006/dec/25-greatest-science-books) could fetch reasonable amounts.

The 97th edition of the CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics sells for $242. I have the 22nd (1937-1938) and 77th editions. The first edition came out in 1914. Each edition has very different content. For example, the 8th edition begins with a table of “antidotes of poisons” and treatments of burns and scalds, presumably because the reader would need to find these quickly. In editions that came out in the Apollo era are tables of minimum energy spacecraft orbits, but not in earlier or later editions. Tables of logarithms for instance have disappeared from recent editions. I’d love to see the first edition, if it still exists anywhere.

Found a rare science book website. It lists rare science books, which can be listed in order of descending price.
http://www.peterharrington.co.uk/rare-books/science-medicine-natural-history/

“AUDUBON, John James, & John Bachman.
The Viviparous quadrupeds of North America. 1845–
£400,000”

“DARWIN, Charles; Robert Fitzroy; Philip Parker King.
Narrative of the Surveying Voyages of His Majesty’s Ships Adventure and Beagle, 1839
£87,500”. Also £25,000

“First edition of Ptolemy’s Almagest”
£80,000

“HOOKE, Robert.
Micrographia: 1665
£65,000”

“AUDUBON, John James.
The Birds of America, 1840–1844.
£52,500”

“AGRICOLA, Georgius.
De re metallica, libri XII: 1556
£45,000”

“GUERICKE, Otto von.
Experimenta nova (ut vocantur) Magdeburgica de Vacuo Spatio … 1672
£37,500”

“GALILEI, Galileo.
Istoria e dimostrazioni intorno alle macchie solari e loro accidenti 1613
£37,500”

“HUGHES, Griffith.
The Natural History of Barbados. 1750
£35,000”

“GILBERT, William.
De magnete, magneticisque corporibus, et de magno magnete tellure; 1600
£30,000”

“HUYGENS, Christiaan.
Traité de la lumière. 1690
£22,500”

“SAVI, Gaetano.
Flora Italiana. 1818–22–24
£20,000”

“RAMELLI, Agostino.
Le diverse et artificiose machine … 1588
£20,000”

“MORLAND, Samuel, Sir.
The description and use of two arithmetick instruments. 1673
£20,000” – note, the greatest treatise on the computer prior to Babbage.

…

Dunno about that list, I would have picked a full edition of Audobons Birds of America in the high hundreds of thousands.

a set of gould’s birds would be worth a bit.

AwesomeO said:

Dunno about that list, I would have picked a full edition of Audobons Birds of America in the high hundreds of thousands.

Perhaps there are lots of copies. Or perhaps the copy that is available for sale is imperfect in some way. There are two prices quoted for the same edition of Darwin’s Beagle.

ChrispenEvan said:

a set of gould’s birds would be worth a bit.

I might be thinking of first editions.

mollwollfumble said:

AwesomeO said:

Dunno about that list, I would have picked a full edition of Audobons Birds of America in the high hundreds of thousands.

Perhaps there are lots of copies. Or perhaps the copy that is available for sale is imperfect in some way. There are two prices quoted for the same edition of Darwin’s Beagle.

Agreed, in retrospect not that surprising, I buy books from Better World that deals in ex library books from America and there is a large spread of prices for the one title depending on who is selling and condition.

AwesomeO said:

ChrispenEvan said:

a set of gould’s birds would be worth a bit.

I might be thinking of first editions.

That website only lists books by Stephen J Gould (eg. The Mismeasure of Man), rather than John Gould.

How many “Birds” books would be in the set? Let’s see: Australia, Britain, Toucans, Partridges, Asia, New Guinea, Hummingbirds and probably others. Many have multiple volumes.

mollwollfumble said:

AwesomeO said:

ChrispenEvan said:

a set of gould’s birds would be worth a bit.

I might be thinking of first editions.

That website only lists books by Stephen J Gould (eg. The Mismeasure of Man), rather than John Gould.

How many “Birds” books would be in the set? Let’s see: Australia, Britain, Toucans, Partridges, Asia, New Guinea, Hummingbirds and probably others. Many have multiple volumes.

7. it is birds of australia.

250 sets of the seven-volume work were printed. Complete sets of original volumes recently sold at auction for more than A$350,000.

wiki

Looking up a few odd physics books, first editions.

MAXWELL, John Clerk.
Matter and Motion. 1876
£2,000

GELL-MANN, Murray.
Symmetries of Baryons and Mesons. 1962
£1,500

HAHN, Otto.
Applied Radiochemistry. 1936
£1,500

HERTZ, Heinrich.
Untersuchungen ueber die Ausbreitung der Elektrischen Kraft. 1892
£1,500

HUBBLE, Edwin.
Distribution of Luminosity in Elliptical Nebulae. 1930
£1,250

GAMOW, George.
Constitution of Atomic Nuclei and Radioactivity. 1931
£500

According to Dr Karl, ‘The World’s Most Expensive Book’ House of Karls, the most expensive science book was The Making of a Fly by Peter Lawrence. It was offered for almost $24 million on Amazon (with a shipping price of $3.99).

It was a software anomaly :)

Divine Angel said:

According to Dr Karl, ‘The World’s Most Expensive Book’ House of Karls, the most expensive science book was The Making of a Fly by Peter Lawrence. It was offered for almost $24 million on Amazon (with a shipping price of $3.99).

It was a software anomaly :)

ROFL.

> The auction house has sold a first edition of Isaac Newton’s 1687 masterpiece, Principia Mathematica, for just over $3.7 million — the most expensive science book sold to date.

Not true. Perhaps it was the most expensive sold at Christie’s.

A copy of Audubon, John James. THE BIRDS OF AMERICA; FROM ORIGINAL DRAWINGS BY JOHN JAMES AUDUBON. LONDON: PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR, 1827-1838. Sold at Sotheby’s for just over 7.2 million British pounds.

http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2010/magnificent-books-manuscripts-and-drawings-from-the-collection-of-frederick-2nd-lord-hesketh-l10413/lot.50.html

“119 complete sets are known to exist in the world today. 107 are in institutions such as universities, libraries, museums, athenaeums, societies and the like. Twelve are in private hands”

ChrispenEvan said:

mollwollfumble said:

AwesomeO said:

I might be thinking of first editions.

That website only lists books by Stephen J Gould (eg. The Mismeasure of Man), rather than John Gould.

How many “Birds” books would be in the set? Let’s see: Australia, Britain, Toucans, Partridges, Asia, New Guinea, Hummingbirds and probably others. Many have multiple volumes.

7. it is birds of australia.

250 sets of the seven-volume work were printed. Complete sets of original volumes recently sold at auction for more than A$350,000.

wiki

Books of the Australia set are being split up into individual colour plates and sold for typically >$1,000 per page.

Gould’s “Birds of Europe” sold at auction for 50,000 pounds.

Divine Angel said:

According to Dr Karl, ‘The World’s Most Expensive Book’ House of Karls, the most expensive science book was The Making of a Fly by Peter Lawrence. It was offered for almost $24 million on Amazon (with a shipping price of $3.99).

It was a software anomaly :)

http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=358

> “AUDUBON, John James, & John Bachman. The Viviparous quadrupeds of North America. 1845– £400,000”

By way of contrast, a copy of:

AUDUBON. THE QUADRUPEDS OF NORTH AMERICA. 1854

sold for a mere £2,750.
http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/2016/travel-atlases-maps-natural-history-l16405.html

mollwollfumble said:

> “AUDUBON, John James, & John Bachman. The Viviparous quadrupeds of North America. 1845– £400,000”

By way of contrast, a copy of:

AUDUBON. THE QUADRUPEDS OF NORTH AMERICA. 1854

sold for a mere £2,750.
http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/2016/travel-atlases-maps-natural-history-l16405.html

Main variables relating to book value of same author.
If First edition.
Condition of books.
History of books.
Later books, if complete with cover.

Never mind the $$$, let’s talk value.

I happen to be reading A Beautiful Question by Franz Wilczek, and he says that the most valuable text ever (by a wide margin) is Euclid’s Elements.

So we can’t argue with that, can we?

Maybe Mollwoll can.

The Rev Dodgson said:

Never mind the $$$, let’s talk value.

I happen to be reading A Beautiful Question by Franz Wilczek, and he says that the most valuable text ever (by a wide margin) is Euclid’s Elements.

So we can’t argue with that, can we?

Maybe Mollwoll can.

Excellent book by the way (from the first 5%).