Gift of Althea Andrews, 1997

Jean-Martin Charcot (1825 – 1893)

Stuttgart: Adolf Bonz & Co., 1878

Health Sciences Library, Rare Book Collection, Freud Library
In 1885, Freud studied with Jean-Martin Charcot, a charismatic lecturer and outstanding clinician, at the famous Salpêtrière hospital in Paris. Freud greatly admired Charcot, even naming his first son Jean Martin in Charcot’s honor. This copy of the German translation of Charcot’s lectures on the localization of brain disorders bears Freud’s ownership signature.
The New York State Psychiatric Library acquired part of Freud’s library in 1939, after Freud had to flee Nazi-occupied Vienna. It has been housed in the Health Sciences Library since 1978.
158.

Sigmund Freud (1856 – 1939)

Autograph document, Essay II, section 3, Vienna, ca. 1912-13

Health Sciences Library, Rare Book Collection
In Totem und Tabu, a study in cultural anthropology and psychoanalysis, Freud made use of Sir James Frazer’s The Golden Bough to theorize about early human culture. He believed that the Oedipus complex was at the root of civilization’s origin—when, Freud asserted, a dominant patriarch was slain and eaten by a primal horde.
Freud gave the manuscript of part II, sections 3 and 4, to his Hungarian disciple Sandor Ferenczi. After Ferenczi’s death his family held the manuscript, which was nearly destroyed in 1945 when the family home caught fire during the Soviet capture of Budapest. The manuscript later passed to Ferenczi’s literary executor, Dr. Michael Balint, whose son, Dr. John Balint, later donated it to the Health Sciences Library.
Gift of John Balint, M.D., 1998

History of Science, Mathematics, Technology
159.

Cuneiform Tablet

Larsa (Tell Senkereh), Iraq, ca. 1820 – 1762 BCE

RBML, Plimpton Cuneiform 322
“Plimpton 322” is known throughout the world to those interested in the history of mathematics as a result of the interest that Otto Neugebauer, chair of Brown University’s History of Mathematics Department, took in the tablet. In the early 1940s, he and his assistant Abraham Sachs interpreted it as containing what is known in mathematics as Pythagorean triples, integer solutions of the equation a² + b² = c², a thousand years before the age of Pythagoras.
Recently, Dr. Eleanor Robson, an authority on Mesopotamian mathematics at the University of Cambridge, has made the case for a more mundane solution, arguing that the tablet was created as a teacher’s aid, designed for generating problems involving right triangles and reciprocal pairs. Mr. Plimpton, who collected “our tools of learning” on a broad scale, would have been delighted with this interpretation, showing the work of an excellent teacher, not a lone genius a thousand years ahead of his time.
Gift of George Arthur Plimpton, 1936
160.

Omar Khayyam (1048 – 1122 CE)

Manuscript on paper, 56 folios, Lahore, India, 13th century

RBML, Smith Oriental Ms. 45
Best known in the west as the poet who wrote the Ruba 'iyat, Omar Khayyam was also one of the leading mathematicians of the Islamic world. This manuscript of his “Algebra,” written in standard Arabic scientific characters, was probably copied from an earlier manuscript; the work begins with basic definitions and makes its principal contribution in the field of cubic equations. Although the “Algebra” was unknown to western mathematicians until the eighteenth century, Omar received wide recognition for it in the Islamic world. He was called to the court of Sultan Malik Shah I (1054-1092), where he revised astronomical tables and introduced a highly accurate calendar. Among the fifteen works bound in this volume are two by Sharaf al-Din al Tusi (d. ca. 1213/1214), one on the height of vertical objects and the other on the height of the North Pole, and treatises by Alhazen (965-1039) on the astrolabe, and by al-Farabi (ca. 870-950) on music.
Gift of David Eugene Smith, 1931
161.

Arte dell’Abbaco

Treviso: [Gerardus de Lisa de Flanobia or Michele Manzolo], 1478

RBML
This unpretentious little book could almost be taken as a symbol of the third component in the collection of George A. Plimpton: “reading, writing and ‘rithmetic.” It intends to teach commercial arithmetic, starting from the most elementary level to explain numbers and their positions as designators of units, tens, hundreds, and so forth. On the opening displayed a reader has noted the method for calculating differences in income for those who invest varying amounts of money at different times. Graphically clear are the various earnings of Piero, Polo and Zuanne. Their names, and indeed the entire text, are in the local vernacular: Venetian dialect, not Italian. Abbacus, or commercial arithmethic, was solidly vernacular, Latin being reserved for the abstract studies of the universities.
Bequest of George Arthur Plimpton, 1936
162.

Georg Agricola (1494 – 1555)

Basel: 1556

RBML
Georg Bauer, better known as Agricola, spent most of his adult life as a physician in the mining region of Joachimsthal in Bohemia. There he observed first-hand every aspect of mines, mining, and minerals. His subjects include, among other things, administration, prospecting, equipment, diseases of the lung, ventilation, ore transportation, soil erosion, and descriptions of eighty different minerals and metallic ore. The book contains 273 splendid woodcuts by Rudolf Manuel Deutsch.
Bequest of Daniel E. Moran, 1939
163.

Astrolabe

Italy, signed by Bernard Sabeus, 1558

RBML, Smith Instruments
This western astrolabe was made by Bernard Sabeus or Zabeus, who worked in Padua during the years 1552 – 59. It came to Columbia with the mathematical instruments and books collected by David Eugene Smith. Smith was professor of mathematics at Teachers College from 1901 until his death in 1944, serving as Teachers College librarian from 1902 until 1920. When he began giving his collection to the Columbia University Libraries in 1931, it included 12,000 printed books on the history of mathematics, ranging from the 15th through the 20th century. It also included 35 boxes of historical documents relating to mathematics; 140 boxes of his own professional papers; 350 volumes of western European manuscripts dating from the 15^th to the early 20^th century; 670 volumes of Oriental (primarily Arabic and Persian) manuscripts dating from the 8^th to the early 20^th century; 88 volumes of Chinese and 363 volumes of Japanese block-print books; 3,000 prints portraits of mathematicians; and some 300 mathematical instruments and related objects.
Gift of David Eugene Smith, 1931
164.