MACLAURIN, COLIN. - EXTENDING NEWTON'S THIRD LAW.

Demonstration de Loix du Choc des Corps. (Piece qui a remporté le Prix de L'Academie Royale des Sciences, Proposé pour l'année mil sept cens vingt-quatre, selon Fonadation faite...).

Paris, Caude Jombert, 1724. 4to. Nice recent marbled boards in old style with titlelabel on frontcover. 24 pp. and one folded engraved plate. A few weak brownspots to margins. Otherwise fine and clean.

First edition of this extremely scarce work by the famous mathematician, solving an important problem in dynamics and extending Newton's work.

"Despite the invention by Leibniz and Newton of the Calculus, the problem of mechanics of impact or percussion remained of centarl interest. The Royal Academy of Sciencesin Paris biannually qwarded a prize for the most outstanding paper; in 1724 and 1726 the prizes were for papers on percussion. Colin Maclaurin, professor of mathematics at the University of Aberdeen, was awarded the prize in 1724 (forthe paper offered) over John Bernoulli...He expressed thet the interaction of forces on ciolliding bodies are equal in magnitude but opposed in direction (newton's third law) and used the physical construct of an elastic spring between the contact points in order to obtain changes in velocity during compression and restitution phases of collisions..."(W.J. Stronge in "Impact Mechanics").

The Scottish mathematician Colin MacLaurin (1698-1746) is best known for developing and extending Newton's work in calculus, geometry and gravitation; his 2-volume work "Treatise of Fluxions" (1742) was the first systematic exposition of Newton's methods. It is well known that MacLaurin was awarded prizes by the Royal Academy of Sciences, Paris, for his earlier work on the collision of bodies (the work offered here) and the tides (1740).

Order-nr.: 42443