Search Results: Titles starting with A from Alembic Rare Books

San Francisco: W. H. Freeman and Company, 1958. 12 page pamphlet, stapled. Illustrations throughout. Very faintly toned at the extreme edges of the spine and wrappers. A superb copy. Offprint of an early popular article on ancient climate by one of the founders of the field, Cesare Emiliani (1922-1995). During the late 1950s Emiliani studied the tests (shells) of marine amoebas called foraminifera that are found in samples taken from the floors of the deep oceans. He realised that the oxygen isotope composition of the tests was influenced by atmospheric conditions at the time they were alive and that the deep-sea cores could be used to chart climate going back millions of years. This work laid the foundations for modern analysis of past climates. It also established that the ice ages were a cyclic phenomena; contributed to our understanding ocean floor spreading and plate tectonics; and provided influential support for the hypothesis of Milutin Milankovi that climate changes in the deep past had… 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 An interesting archive of unpublished correspondence between leading radio astronomer Alfred Lovell (1913-2012) and astronomer and science populariser Arthur Beer.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

Chicago, 1952-53. Including 3 typed letters signed (one with the signature removed for reproduction in Vistas in Astronomy) and 2 autograph letters signed by Urey. Housed in Beer's tan paper folder with "Urey" in ink on the cover. Just a little creasing to some pieces. Excellent condition. An archive of correspondence between astronomer Arthur Beer and Nobel Prize winning chemist Harold Urey regarding the latter's contribution to Vistas in Astronomy. 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 for developing one of the first scientific radio programmes, Aus Natur und Technik. Beer escaped from Germany in 1934, assisted by Einstein, who wrote him a public letter of recommendation, and spent the rest of his life in the UK. He worked at the Cambridge Solar Physics… Read More

Washington D.C.: The Smithsonian Institution, 1896. Hardcover. Excellent. 4to - over 9¾ - 12" tall. Large octavo. Original green cloth, titles to upper board gilt, yellow coated endpapers. Corners and tail of spine bumped slightly affecting leaves, else a very fresh copy in excellent condition. First separate edition, first printing of the first publication on the discovery of argon, which led to Nobel Prizes for its co-discoverers. "Few discoveries have been as dramatic as the discovery of argon in the atmosphere by Lord Rayleigh and William Ramsay, professor of chemistry at University College, London. The discovery of argon involved a bitter public dispute concerning the legitimacy of a chemical element whose most important characteristic was its inertness, and which forced the chemists to reassess the very notion of a chemical element." Rayleigh had begun work to determine the densities of atmospheric gases in 1882. In 1892 he uncovered a strange discrepancy between the atomic weight of… Read More

c. 1900. Carved boxwood desk seal. 850 x 350mm. No monograph to the base. A couple of very minor nicks in the wood, slight wear at the base. Excellent condition. A lovely Art Nouveau desk seal in carved boxwood depicting a spray of flowers. We have been unable to determine the maker, and have never encountered a similar seal.

Tuttlingen, Germany: Michael Birk, [c. 1890s]. Quarto. Original limp cloth wrappers blocked in gilt, grey, black, and white, blue endpapers, blue top-stain. 15 double-sided leaves of chromolithographic, metallic-printed, and embossed designs, of which 6 are folding, engravings throughout the other 290 pages. Minor bumps at the corners. A superb, fresh copy in unused condition with many of the leaves unopened and still delicately adhering to each other at the edges. A superb, unused Art Nouveau chromolithographic catalogue issued by the German pharmaceutical and medical supply firm Michael Birk, probably in the 1890s. This remarkable, 320 page catalogue catalogue contains 15 double-sided plates of elaborate chromolithographic, metallic, and embossed designs for product labels, as well as another 290 pages advertising an incredible array of other products. The chromolithographic labels could be ordered in bulk to be used on bottles and jars filled in person by the pharmacist, and some could be… Read More

Oslo: Lethaia, 1979. 10-page offprint, wire-stitched. Illustrations within the text. A little minor creasing. Excellent condition. A rare, inscribed offprint by Halszka Osmólska (1930-2008), "one of the most productive dinosaur paleontologists of her generation" and "a giant" in the field (Dodson, "Polish Women in the Gobi – In Loving Memory of Halszka Osmólska", American Paleontologist, Vol. 16, No. 3, Fall 2008). Inscribed by the author on the upper cover using an abbreviated form of her signature, "from HOsm...". This article reports on the authors' observations of hadrosaur cranial structures, based on fossils collected from the Upper Cretaceous Nemegt Formation by the Polish-Mongolian Paleontological Expeditions as well as examination of the hadrosaurs in the collections of the USSR Academy of Sciences in Moscow. Osmólska graduated from the University of Warsaw in 1955, and spent most of her career at the Institute of Paleobiology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, where she served as… Read More