BRISSON (Mathurin-Jacques). Traité élémentaire ou Principes - Lot 6

BRISSON (Mathurin-Jacques). Traité élémentaire ou Principes de physique. À Paris, de l'imprimerie de Moutard, 1789. 3 volumes in-8, garnet-red morocco, smooth spines cloisonné and decorated with gilt motifs including antique vases with brown title-pieces, triple gilt fillet framing the boards with gilt corner finials and gilt coat of arms in the center, ornate coupes, inner gilt roulette, gilt edges (period binding). lxxxiv-418 + (6 of which the 2nd and 4th are blank)-511-(one blank) + (6 of which the 2nd and 4th are blank)-584 pp; spines faded, 3 spinebands split, a few tiny tears on the second board of volume III. FIRST EDITION. Collection of the essential lectures given by Mathurin-Jacques Brisson at the Collège de Navarre: they met with great success and were also attended by foreigners, including the physicist Piotr Ivanovitch Strakhov. 46 ENGRAVED PLATES ON COPPER WITHOUT TEXT under the direction of Jacques-Renaud Bénard, an artist who, as head of a large workshop, had been the main contributor to the illustration of the Encyclopédie. ASSISTANT TO REAUMUR, DISCIPLE OF NOLLET AND TENANT TO EXPERIMENTAL PHYSICS, MATHURIN-JACQUES BRISSON (1703-1806) led two successive scientific careers. First, he played an important role with his relative by marriage Réaumur (1683-1757), curating his zoological collections and spearheading the publication of his Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire des insectes (1734-1742). He embarked on a general classification of the animal kingdom, and in 1760 published the most important Ornithology before Buffon's, but Buffon was jealously opposed to him and forbade him access to the collections of the King's Cabinet. Brisson then abandoned natural history, and turned to the physical sciences, impressing Abbé Nollet who, in 1770, had him appointed his successor as Professor of Experimental Physics at the Collège de Navarre, and who at the same time helped him obtain the position of Professor of Physics and Natural History at the Enfants de France. Brisson submitted a large number of physics dissertations to the Académie des Sciences, where he was admitted as a naturalist in 1779, before becoming a boarder in the physics class in 1785. Having already published a Dictionnaire raisonné de physique in 1781, in 1789 he published the present work, which met with great success. Except for an interruption under the Terror, he continued his career as a teacher. Although, because of Buffon, he was not the great naturalist he could have become, he remains one of the great popularizers of the physical sciences of his time. EXEMPLAIRE EN MAROQUIN AUX ARMES DE LA REINE MARIE-ANTOINETTE (OHR, pl. n° 2508, fer n° 5). Provenance: orientalist Charles Defrémery (1822-1883), whose library was sold at auction in 1884. - The bookseller and bibliographer Damescène Morgand, who lent it to the Paris Universal Exhibition in 1889.