Search Results: Authors starting with L from Alembic Rare Books

Ottowa: Government Printing Bureau, 1917. Octavo. Original grey wrappers printed in black. 7 engraved folding plates, 4 illustrations from photos and 38 engravings within the text. Ink stamps of the Geological Society of London to the upper wrapper and title. Ownership in stamp of William P. Ogilvie to the upper wrapper. Wrappers a little rubbed and dulled, spine panel slightly toned, hinges reinforced with tape, paper flaw to the edge of the front blank. A very good copy. First edition of this important and copiously illustrated monograph that was one of the first publications to illustrate a dinosaur in non-standing positions. Author Lawrence Lambe (1863-1919) "was one of the first dinosaur hunters to discover the richness of the Red Deer River beds in Alberta around the turn of the century, but he was not an avid field worker, and he moved on to become Chief Paleontologist for the Geological Survey of Canada. in 1912 he commissioned the Sternberg family to collect dinosaurs for Canada, and it was… Read More

New York: Bantam Books, 1988. Octavo. Original black quarter cloth, dark grey boards, title to spine in silver, Hawking's monogram to upper board in blind. With the dust jacket. Illustrations throughout the text. Binding a little rubbed and bumped. A very good copy in the rubbed and creased jacket with some bubbling of the plastic coating, especially along folds. First edition, the corrected second printing of this landmark popular work on the quest for the Grand Unified Theory. From the library of physicist Peter Landsberg, with his ownership signature, notes and highlighting, and letter to him loosely inserted. Peter Landsberg (1922-2010), was a German Jewish refugee to Britain who earned his PhD in quantum mechanics at Imperial College London in 1949 and joined the faculties of the Universities of Cardiff and Southampton. "Landsberg was not solely interested in one branch of physics, he was interested in physics in general and this boyish enthusiasm took his research to all areas of theoretical… Read More

London: Collins, 1979. Octavo. Original red boards, titles to spine gilt. With the dust jacket. 6 double-sided plates from black and white photographs, line drawings throughout the text. A fine copy in the jacket. First edition, first impression and a fine copy, uncommon in such nice condition. Mary Leakey (1913-1996) was an accomplished archaeologist and paleoanthropologist who worked primarily on early humanoid fossils in Kenya and Tanzania with her husband and scientific partner Louis Leakey. "The site that will always be associated with Mary Leakey is Olduvai Gorge, a canyon in northern Tanzania containing rich collections of fossils and artefacts spanning about the last 2 million years. This became her second home, where she enjoyed fieldwork and research, accompanied by her pack of beloved dalmatian dogs, of which she was a well-known breeder. At Olduvai on 17 July 1959 she made one of the most famous fossil discoveries of all time, the skull of a 1.8 million-year-old early human relative whom… Read More

London: Printed for the Ray Society, sold by Dulau & Co., Ltd., 1930. Octavo. Original blue cloth elaborately blocked in blind, titles to spine and floral roundel to upper board gilt, yellow coated endpapers, top edge gilt. Ray Society half title with portrait vignette, 4 plates, engravings throughout the text. 16-page Ray Society membership and recent publications lists dated January 1930 at rear. Cloth just a little rubbed at the extremities, spine and edges of the boards tanned, free endpapers partially tanned. An excellent copy. First edition, first impression. Presentation copy inscribed by the author to her sister on the front free endpaper, "To dear Yvonne, From M. V. L." (see Lebour's obituary in the Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom, volume 52, p. 778). Diatoms — microscopic algae with silica shells that live in both freshwater and marine environments — are one of the earth's keystone species. They produce an amount of oxygen comparable to all terrestrial… Read More

Washington D. C.: Howard University Press, 2005. Octavo. Original black boards, titles to spine gilt. With the dust jacket. 8 double-sided plates from photographs. Only the lightest rubbing and a few minor creases to the jacket. A superb, fresh copy. First edition, first printing of the autobiography of one of the world's leading cancer surgeons. Presentation copy inscribed by the author to columnist William Safire on the title, "To Bill Safire, with best wishes & thanks for all you do for so many at Dana and the New York Times, Lasalle D. Leffall, 9/27/06." LaSalle D. Leffall (1930-2019) graduated first in his class from the Howard University School of Medicine and served as a senior fellow in cancer surgery at Memorial Sloane-Kettering, which he chose because "I thought surgery was the most dynamic field" and "Memorial Sloane-Kettering was using some of the most exciting techniques" (Krapp, Notable Black American Scientists, p. 205). In 1962 he joined the faculty of Howard, rising to chair of the… Read More

Washington, DC: Carnegie Institution, 1935. Hardcover. Very Good. 4to - over 9¾ - 12" tall. Tall quarto. Original green cloth, titles to upper board gilt. Illustrations throughout. Upper corner bumped, a little dampstain to tail of spine slightly affecting contents, minor rubbing at extremities, margins of contents toned. A very good copy. First edition, staff issue, witht he ownership inscription of seismologist Hugo Benioff. The present volume collects three years of Carnegie Institution News Service Bulletins (1933-1935), including articles and scientific papers on a variety of subjects researched by Carnegie staff members around the world (this is a staff edition copy, as opposed to the press and school editions, which do not include the "Notes on Institution Affairs"). The key article in this volume is "Machine Performs Difficult Mathematical Calculations", an account of the "Congruence Machine" (now known as a Lehmer sieve) developed to determine prime numbers by University of California… Read More

New York and London: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 1932 & 1933. 2 volumes, octavo. Original red cloth, titles to spines gilt, borders to boards blocked in blind. Bookplate of John Hubley Schall, Jr. in volume I. Light rubbing to the extremities, a few small spots to the cloth of volume I. An excellent, fresh set. A very attractive set of this uncommon mathematical textbook by the first woman to receive tenure in the University of Chicago mathematics department, Mayme Irwin Logsdon (1881-?). "Mayme Logsdon returned to school after the death of her husband and earned all of her degrees from the University of Chicago. After teaching for four years at Hastings College, she returned to Chicago, where she advanced to associate professor. She remained at that rank for sixteen years without being promoted to professor. In 1946, she took a job as professor at the University of Miami and remained there until retirement [in 1961]. She was a dean of the College of Chicago from 1922 to 1925 and was an… Read More

Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company, 1957. Octavo. Original red cloth, titles to spine gilt, facsimile signature to upper board gilt, top edge dyed yellow. With the original glassine jacket. Portrait frontispiece, five plates and an illustration within the text. Ownership ink stamp of Rudolph W. Preisendorfer with manuscript phone number on the front free endpaper. Minor bumps to corners, free endpapers partially toned. An excellent, fresh copy in the jacket that is a little rubbed and yellowed with a white spot on the lower panel. First edition, first printing. A very attractive copy in the uncommon glassine jacket. Hendrik Lorentz (1853-1928) was a theoretical physicist at the University of Leiden who made important contributions to our understanding electromagnetism and relativity, and was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1902 for his explanation of the Zeeman effect. Lorentz laid much of the groundwork for Einstein's theory of special relativity, and he was supportive of the younger… Read More

Manchester, 1952-1956. Including 16 typed letters signed (one with the signature clipped out for reproduction in Vistas in Astronomy) and 1 autograph letter signed by Lovell, together with yellow carbons of Beer's typed letters, bound together with green string with metal caps in Beer's tan folder with the name Lovell in ink on the cover. Rust stains to the top three documents and the lower document from the metal caps on the binding string, not affecting the Lovell letters. Occasional mild creasing, otherwise the contents fresh and in excellent condition. An interesting archive of unpublished correspondence between leading radio astronomer Alfred Lovell (1913-2012) and astronomer and science populariser Arthur Beer. Beer (1900-1980) was born in Richenberg, Bohemia (later Czechoslovakia), and educated in Austria and Germany. He worked as an astronomer at Breslau University, where he studied binary stars, and at the German Maritime Observatory. He also wrote newspaper columns and was responsible… Read More

Amsterdam: University of Leiden, 1977. Perfect bound, original red wrappers printed in black. Charts and graphs within the text. Wrappers a little creased and rubbed, tears to the spine repaired with clear tape, head of spine bumped also affecting the contents. Good condition. The PhD thesis of University of Leiden astronomer Jan Lub, who specialises in "the molecular interstellar medium, galaxy centers, star formation and dwarf galaxies & Magellanic Clouds". The RR Lyrae are periodic variable stars that are commonly found in globular clusters and are used as standard candles to determine distances. This copy from the library of Allan R. Sandage (without ownership marks), who determined the first reasonably accurate values for the Hubble Constant and the age of the universe and "was probably (rightly) the greatest and most influential observational astronomer of the last half-century" (NY Times obituary, November 17, 2010). After serving in the Navy he finished his physics degree at the University… Read More