Autograph letter signed “J. Bernoulli” to Jean-Jacques Dortous de Mairan

by Johann Bernoulli

$55,000 · Offered by Sophia Rare Books

Basel: Autograph manuscript, 1 March 1724. Three weeks before the Paris Academy would decide its 1724 prize on the laws governing the collision of perfectly hard bodies, Johann Bernoulli sat in Basel awaiting the verdict on his entry and wrote twelve pages to the man who would become, four years later, the chief French opponent of the principle that entry rested on. Of the fourteen submissions on the question, his alone

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