I. On the reflexion and refraction of sound. Offprint from: Transactions of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, Vol. VI, Part III. [Bound with:] II. On the motion of waves in a variable canal of small depth & width. Offprint from ibid., Vol. VI, Part III. [And with:] III. On the laws of reflexion and refraction of light at the common surface of two non-crystallized media. Offprint from ibid., Vol. VII, Part I. [And with:] IV. Note on the motion of waves in canals. Offprint from ibid., Vol. VII, Part I. [And with:] V. Supplement to a memoir on the laws of reflexion and refraction of light. Offprint from ibid., Vol. VII, Part I. [And with:] VI. On the propagation of light in crystallized media. Offprint from ibid., Vol. VII, Part II

INSCRIBED OFFPRINTS OF SIX PAPERS BY GEORGE GREEN. First edition, extremely rare offprints, all inscribed in the author's hand, of the last six published papers of George Green - he published only nine scientific journal articles in total, in addition to his famous book An Essay on the Application of Mathematical Analysis to the Theories of Electricity and Magnetism (1828), "one of the major publications in the mathematics of the 19th century" (Grattan-Guinness, p. 403). "In his Cambridge papers, Green abandoned the topics of electricity and magnetism and made original contributions in hydrodynamics, sound and light" (Cannell, p. xxvii). In paper III, Green is the first to enunciatethe law of conservation of energy - nine years before its appearance in Hermann Helmholtz's Über die Erhaltung der Kraft. In paper II, he anticipates the WKB approximation method (named after the 20th century physicists Gregor Wentzel, Hendrik Kramers, and Leon Brillouin) by almost a century. Despite its importance, the Essay initially attracted little attention, and following its publication Green returned to his original occupation as a miller in the provincial town of Nottingham. In 1830, however, "he came into contact with Sir Edward Bromhead, a Lincolnshire landowner and mathematics graduate of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. Bromhead recognized the originality of Green's work and encouraged him to resume his mathematical studies. As a result Green wrote three papers which Bromhead sponsored for publication in the Transactions of the Cambridge Philosophical Society and the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Finally, in 1833, Green, at the age of forty, enrolled as an undergraduate in Bromhead's own College, Caius. Green took the Mathematical Tripos in 1837, emerging as fourth wrangler, and two years later he was elected to a College Fellowship. During these two years he published six more papers in the Transactions of the Cambridge Philosophical Society [the six papers offered here], of which he became a member" (Cannell, p. xxvii). "Green's major contribution to mathematical science after that of the Essay of 1828 is to be found in his three papers on light: 'On the laws of reflexion and refraction of light at the common surface of two non-crystallized media', 'Supplement to a memoir on the laws of reflexion and refraction of light', and 'On the propagation of light in crystallized media' [III, V, VI]. These publications were his last and indicate that Green's intellectual powers in his forties were as strong as ever" (Cannell & Lord, p. 35). Indeed, in paper III Green made a major theoretical advance. "For the purpose of explaining the propagation of transversal vibrations through the luminiferous ether, it becomes necessary to investigate the equations of motion of an elastic solid. It is here that Green for the first time enunciates the principle of the Conservation of Work, which he bases on the assumption of the impossibility of a perpetual motion. This principle he enunciates in the following words: 'In whatever manner the elements of any material system may act upon each other, if all the internal forces be multiplied by the elements of their respective directions, the total sum for any assigned portion of the mass will always be the exact differential of some function.' This function, it will be seen, is what is now known under the name of Potential Energy, and the above principle is in fact equivalent to stating that the sum of the Kinetic and Potential Energies of the system is constant" (Ferrers, pp. vii-viii). Several, perhaps all, of these offprints were published before their appearance in the Transactions. For example, offprint VI is dated 1840 on the title page, but Vol. VII, Part II of the Transactions, in which the paper appears, is dated 1842. OCLC lists between one and four copies of each offprint worldwide: I: Senate House, University of London; National Library of Wales; Strasbourg, Turin. II: Senate House, University of.…