Théorie de la double réfraction de la lumière dans les substances cristallisées: mémoire couronné par l'Institut, dans la séance publique du 2 janvier 1810

Paris: Garnerey & Baudoin, 1810. 1st Edition. Hardcover. Very Good. 1st Edition. Hardcover. 4to (252 x 204 mm). 302 pp., including half-title and 3 engraved folding plates. Contemporary French prize binding of the Collège Royal de Versailles in full sprinkled calf, spine and boards tooled in gilt, spine with gilt-lettered black morocco label, marbled edges and endpapers (extremities rubbed, joint at foot of upper board with wormhole in leather, spine and boards toward spine a trifle sunned). Text and plates crisp and bright throughout with light age-toning, occasional minor spotting, a few marginal paper flaws. Provenance: Collège Royal de Versailles (bookplate to front-pastedown printed in Latin with donee "Oscar Leevy(?)" and date 18 Aug. 1810 added in manuscript). A fine copy in untouched binding. ----

RARE FIRST EDITION of Malus' prize-winning work on double refraction. Malus took part in the Egyptian expedition as an engineering officer. Director of Studies at the Ecole Polytechnique in 1811, he died the following year at the age of thirty-seven. Malus took up the work of Huygens, Newton and Wollaston. He deduced Huygens's law by means of the principle of the least action. Also of great importance is his law for the relative intensities of the ordinary and extraordinary rays. After a century of discussion, his research led to the law on the intensity of polarized light that bears his name. He studied the polarization of light by reflection and showed that his theory of double refraction was compatible with the principle of least action and the corpuscular hypothesis.
References: DSB IX, pp.72-74; Schuh's Annotated Bio-Bibliography. - Visit our website to see more images!