CHRISTIE'S NEW YORK TO OFFER SIX CENTURIES OF REVOLUTIONARY SCIENCE On June 17, Christie’s New York will offer a remarkable single-owner collection:
Important Scientific Books: The Richard Green Library.
News-Antique.com - May 30,2008 - New York – On June 17, Christie’s New York will offer a remarkable single-owner collection:Important Scientific Books: The Richard Green Library. This unique ensemble features over 300 lots from
six revolutionary centuries of scientific, mathematical and philosophical thought. The sale offers
outstanding works by Galileo Galilei, Nicolaus Copernicus, Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin, Karl
Marx, Johnannes Kepler, Sir Isaac Newton, and many more including a number of works never seen
on the market before. The collection is expected to realize in excess of $6 million.
A physician and amateur astronomer, Dr. Green began collecting in the early 1970s. His interest in
scientific works broadened as he collected important works in the history of astronomy and science,
and an early purchase of Galileo’s Dialogo (estimate: $40,000-60,000) established his serious
commitment to the pursuit of a library. Progressively, he began to add important works in the
history of ideas, and sought significant books from many scientific disciplines.
The top lot of the sale is arguably the finest copy in private hands
of Nicolaus Copernicus’s De revolutionibus, (image left- estimate:
$900,000-1,200,000). In 1975, Dr. Green purchased the first
edition of the most important scientific publication of the 16th
Century. The Green copy of Copernicus’s magnum opus is one of
the widest-margined copies located and is preserved in a
contemporary binding unwashed and unpressed.
Astronomical highlights joined the collection, with lavish star atlases graphically complementing the
scientific texts. Andreas Cellarius’s atlas of 1660 (image on first page- estimate: $80,000-120,000), the
only celestial atlas published during the golden age of Dutch cartography, is considered by many to
be the finest of its kind ever published. Equally beautiful, and considerably scarcer, is John Bevis’s
Uranographia Britannica of circa 1750 (estimate: $60,000-80,000).
No library of modern science would be complete without of one of the most brilliant minds of the
20th Century: Albert Einstein. An impressive collection of 130 offprints from Einstein (estimate:
$150,000-250,000) comprises Einstein’s own set of reference copies, several with autograph
additions and corrections, Einstein’s first and last papers, two Nobel Prize papers, key papers in the
field of quantum theory, the theories of special and general relativity, and the unified theory.
The sale also features the only known first edition of the first telephone
book (Image right- estimate: $30,000-40,000). The 20-page book
containing the names and numbers of 391 subscribers around New
Haven, Connecticut, was issued in November 1878– just two years after
the invention of the telephone by Alexander Graham Bell. The directory
contains some useful advice for inexperienced callers such as, "Should
you wish to speak to another subscriber you should commence the
conversation by saying 'Hulloa!'.
Other featured lots are a first edition of Charles Darwin’s most
influential work, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection
(Image left- estimate: $80,000-120,000); a first edition of Sigmund
Freud’s Die Traumdeutung (The Interpretation of Dreams) (estimate:
$6,000-8,000); the first part of Benjamin Franklin’s most important
scientific publication, Experiments and Observations on Electricity, made
at Philadelphia in America (estimate: $30,000-40,000); a first
