Christie’s is auctioning off books from the Owen Gingerich Astronomical Library. According to the Christie’s website:
Highlights from the Owen Gingerich Astronomical Library trace the exciting developments of the Scientific Revolution through first and early editions of important works by Johannes Kepler, Tycho Brahe, Galileo, and many others. They include Kepler’s Mysterium cosmographicum, his first substantial work, and Astronomia nova, his masterpiece; John Flamsteed’s own copy of the unauthorised star catalogue published by Halley and Newton; an annotated copy of the second edition of Copernicus’s De revolutionibus orbium coelestium; and the first complete English translation of Euclid’s Elements of Geometrie.
Owen Gingerich (1930-2023) was an astronomer and historian of science at Harvard. He had a huge impact on my work. He took an interest in what I was doing, encouraged me (especially by urging me to attend my first History of Astronomy conference at Notre Dame in 2009), and apparently even put in a good word with an editor of a journal or two that helped get some of my earlier papers published. He also let me look through his collection of rare books which Christie’s is now selling!
Among the Gingerich books now for sale is a copy of the Rosa Ursina, the detailed study of the sun done by Fr. Christoph Scheiner, S.J. in the seventeenth century. It also features the first diagram of an equatorial mounting for a telescope (below at right). Click here for the details from Christie’s.
Back in the early 2010s my wife, younger son, and I travelled to Boston to do some tourist stuff. While there, we visited with Owen at his office at Harvard. I had never put my hands on a rare book until then. Yes, I was doing lots of history of astronomy research. However, my “library” consisted of material available on-line, through Google Books, Archive.org, www.e-rara.ch, and the like. It still does!
So I expected some sort of hushed, “hands off there, Graney,” white gloves presentation of the books. Well, we were all quite surprised when Owen simply cleared some space on his desk, hauled some books off the shelf, plopped them down, and opened them up for us to hold and flip through. I had thought these books would be delicate. I was wrong — they were very sturdily constructed! He even plopped a couple on a photocopier to make some copies of stuff he thought I might find useful.
Well, now those books are for sale. If you have a few thousand, or tens of thousands, of dollars to spend on them, you can buy one. Browse the collection: CLICK HERE for it. Maybe you won’t be buying anything, but it is worth your time to just look around. And if you do buy, let me know!
