Opera Mathematica in unum volumen congesta.

VIÈTE, François (SCHOOTEN, Frans van, ed.)

Published by Bonaventure & Abraham Elzevier, Leiden, 1646

About this Item

THE GREATEST FRENCH MATHEMATICIAN OF THE 16TH CENTURY. First collected edition, rare, of the mathematical writings of François Viète (1540-1603), the greatest French mathematician of the sixteenth century, who was "the first extensively to use letters of the alphabet to represent numerical quantities" (Hutchinson's Dictionary of Scientific Bibliography, p. 690), and "the first mathematician of his age to think occasionally as mathematicians habitually think today" (Bell, p. 99). Viète used letters "both for known . and for unknown quantities" and "this innovation, considered one of the most significant advances in the history of mathematics, prepared the way for the development of algebra" (DSB); it earned him the sobriquet "the father of algebra" (ibid.). Viète's Isagoge in artem analyticam, the earliest work on symbolic algebra, opens the present edition and is followed by 15 further tracts on algebra, numerical analysis, geometry, trigonometry, and the newly adopted Gregorian calendar, the last of which include three volvelles (here bound in uncut on a separate sheet). Viète developed "the systematic application of syncopated algebra to the solution of geometric problems" and thus is widely considered to have paved the way for René Descartes's invention of analytic geometry. The young Isaac Newton carefully worked through a copy of the Opera when he was studying in Cambridge (Whiteside, p. 21), and this influenced his own work on algebra and analytic geometry. The Opera was edited by the influential Leiden University mathematician Frans van Schooten (1615-60), who numbered among his students the young Christiaan Huygens. Schooten later (1659-61) published an important edition of Descartes's Géométrie with explanatory notes, along with several treatises of his own and his students. The idea of printing an edition of Viète's works was suggested to the Elzevirs by Marin Mersenne in 1638, and the proposed work was advertised in 1640 (in the first number of the Catalogus Universalis), but it did not appear until six years later because of the difficulties which Schooten experienced in finding copies of the individual works, which were already rare less than fifty years after their publication. All of them are virtually unobtainable today in their original printings, and the present volume is therefore the closest a modern collector can hope to approach the original writings of Viète. The Opera includes all of Viète's published writings, with the exception of the Canon triangulorum (1579) - Schooten misinterpreted a remark of Viète's which seemed to imply that the tables were inaccurate and so chose to omit the work - and the semi-popular Principes de Cosmographie (1637). Viète's principal astronomical treatise, the Harmonicum coeleste, which inspired many of his other works, remains unpublished today. "Viète's initial goal in his mathematical work was the development and improvement of geometric models for calculations in planetary astronomy. Delambre gave the right perspective when he wrote in his 1819Histoire de l'Astronomie du Moyen Agethat Viète 'was not an astronomer, but he was the greatest geometer of his time'. Like Ptolemy, Viète considered geometry to provide the theoretical foundation for astronomical calculations, and through his trigonometric investigations he found a way to create an algebra for geometry that surpasses traditional numerical algebra in its flexibility, generality, and utility. In the process of creating this new algebra, Viète gave algebra a grounding in Euclid's Elements and he renovated geometric analysis through the algebrization of the transformational rules of Euclidean geometry" (Oaks, pp. 296-7). Schooten organised Viète's treatises by topic: the first four are algebraic, then the one treatise on numerical solution of equations, followed by eight geometrical works, and concluding with three on the calendar. We give the titles of the individual works as they originally appeared, which sometime. Seller Inventory # 4931

Bibliographic Details

Title: Opera Mathematica in unum volumen congesta.

Publisher: Bonaventure & Abraham Elzevier, Leiden

Publication Date: 1646

Edition: First edition.