Farkas Bolyai, 1850

[BOLYAI, Farkas (1775-1856)]. Arithmetika eleje kezdõnek. [Beginning of Arithmetic for Beginners.] [Maros Vásárhely (now Târgu Mureș, Romania), Reform Kollégyom, 1850.]

First edition, exceptionally rare, from the father of Hungarian mathematics. Bolyai is credited with putting mathematical education on a solid theoretical footing and teaching the subject in Hungarian. This is one of his mathematical teaching texts for students at the Marosvásárhely Reform College. It consists of 55 numbered algebraic operations along with applications. Bolyai was a fellow student with Gauss in Göttingen, and the two remained friends and correspondents throughout their lives. Farkas famously taught his son, János Bolyai, mathematics, and the later became one of the two most important creators of non-Euclidean geometry, the other being Lobachevsky. Nagy p 346; see P. Stäckel, Urkunden zur Geschichte der nichteuklidischen Geometie. II: Wolfgang und Johann Bolyai. Geometrische Untersuchungen, Leipzig 1913.

Octavo (187 x 107 mm). 40 pp. (some minor soiling at margins, a little foxing). Contemporary cloth-backed blue paper boards, unprinted spine label (some rubbing at spine ends and tips, a little soiling, label chipped). Provenance: Pall Karoly (blindstamp to first leaf).