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Significant mathematical book: A Treatise of Algebra, Both Historical and Practical, by John Wallis, Professor of Geometry in the University of Oxford. First edition. London: Printed by John Playford, for Richard Davis, Bookseller in the University of Oxford, 1685. Hardcover bound in contemporary dark brown calf, 8.25 x 13, with ten engraved folding plates. Book condition: G+/None, with wear and rubbing to boards, crease to edge of the frontispiece, ink inscriptions to title and first free end pages, and light soiling.
Described by Stedall as 'the first substantial history of the subject,' Wallis’s work combines a history of algebra with an exposition of its methods. Its final chapters treat exhaustion, indivisibles, infinite series, and other foundations of calculus, ensuring that Isaac Newton’s unpublished discoveries appeared in England before their dissemination elsewhere in Europe. A Puritan minister and Parliamentarian cryptographer, Wallis rose to Oxford’s chair of Geometry after the Royalist purge. He later declined Leibniz’s request to teach cryptography abroad and also published works in theology, logic, grammar, and philosophy.
