LOBATSCHEWSKY, Nicolai Ivanovich (1792-1856) & Jules HOUEL (1823-86). Etudes Geometriques sur la Theorie des Paralleles.

LOBATSCHEWSKY, Nicolai Ivanovich (1792-1856) and Jules HOÜEL (1823-86).  Études Géométriques sur la Théorie des Parallèles … Traduit de l’ Allemand par J. Hoüel … suivi d’ un Extrait de la Correspondance de Gauss et de Schumacher. Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 1866. Large 8vo (232 x 150mm). Diagrams (some mainly marginal staining and spotting). Contemporary cloth-backed marbled boards, spine gilt (extremities rubbed). Provenance: Dr. Paul Stäckel (bookplate on verso of title); copious neat early German technical annotation to front pastedown and endpapers; from the Collection of Peter and Margarethe Braune. First separate French edition of this work which heralds the discovery of non-Euclidean geometry. Hoüel’s translation is important. “The cause of Lobachevskian geometry was, however, furthered by Hoüel, one of its earliest proponents, who in 1866 brought out a French translation of Geometrische Untersuchungen, with appended extracts from the Gauss-Schumacher correspondence" (DSB VIII, p.433).