Autograph letter signed to [Fanny Kellogg]. Down, Beckenham, Kent, April 13, 1879

Darwin discusses the hereditary transmission of behavior and a vivid example of the phenomenon from the opening chapter of The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals.

$18,000

Some Account of the Pennsylvania Hospital; From its First Rise, to the Beginning of the Fifth Month, called May, 1754. Philadelphia: B. Franklin and D. Hall, 1754

FIRST EDITION of Benjamin Franklin’s account of the Pennsylvania Hospital, the first hospital established in the British colonies, co-founded by Franklin with his friend Dr. Thomas Bond. It remains a leading medical institution in Philadelphia.

$17,500

The World as I See It. New York: Philosophical Library, (c.1949)

Signed and dated 1950 by Albert Einstein on the front free endpaper.

$13,500

Catalogue of the celebrated collection of works of art and vertu known as “The Vienna Museum,” the property of Messrs. Lowenstein Brothers, of Frankfort-on-the-Main. London: Christie, Manson & Woods, 1860

This important volume is “the earliest photographically illustrated auction catalogue” (Gernsheim, Incunabula, 122). It contains 36 photographs on salted paper by Hermann Emden of Frankfurt.

$12,000

Two 16 mm films of the first Russian and the first American to walk in space. No place, 1965

Films of the space walks of Aleksei Leonov and Edward White.

$9,500

Interstellar and Interplanetary Communication by Optical Masers. Washington, February 27, 1961

PRE-PUBLICATION RARITY. “The classic paper published in Nature that started it all” (coseti.org), this is the founding work of optical SETI. This pre-publication form is dated more than a month before the article’s publication in Nature. For years SETI research focused on radio transmissions, but the development of powerful lasers has made Optical SETI (OSETI) a highly promising area of research. Townes’s prescient proposal is even the more remarkable given the very limited power of masers and lasers at the time this paper appeared.

$8,500

The Double Helix. In Atlantic Monthly. Boston, January and February 1968

FIRST EDITION of The Double Helix, preceding the publication in book form in late February 1968. Signed by James Watson on the front cover of each issue.

$4,800

Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. Philadelphia: Saunders, 1948

FIRST EDITION of this classic, a book that helped usher in the sexual revolution.

$3,500

“Ueber die von der molekularkinetischen Theorie der Waerme geforderte Bewegung von in ruhenden Fluessigkeiten suspendierten Teilchen” in Annalen der Physik, 4. Folge, 17 Band, No. 8. Leipzig, 1905

FIRST EDITION. “On the Movement of Small Particles Suspended in a Stationary Liquid Demanded by the Molecular Kinetic Theory of Heat” appears here on pp. 549-560. This landmark paper on Brownian motion is one of the three great papers from 1905, Einstein annus mirabilis.

$3,500

Michael Faraday. Ipswich, [1851]

This is a rare early state or proof copy of this lovely portrait of Michael Faraday, the greatest figure in the history of elecromagnetism.

$2,800