HAÜY abbé René-Just Traité de minéralogie.

Hoover, 391 (missing the rare atlas volume); see Honeyman, vente IV, lot 1627.

First edition, very rare complete with the atlas. Neville only describes the second edition (1822) and the book is missing to Sinkankas.

Haüy (1743-1822) was a French mineralogist and crystallographer, considered to be the founder of modern crystallography. In 1770, he was ordained a priest and assigned to teach at the Collège Cardinal Lemoine. After attending Daubenton’s lectures on mineralogy, he concentrated his studies and research on this subject. In 1794, he published his pioneering work ‘Essai d’une théorie sur la structure des cristaux’ and left teaching to devote himself exclusively to mineralogical studies.

Haüy was arrested during the French Revolution, but thanks to the efforts of a former student, Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, he was released the night before the execution of the other members of his group. In 1795, he was appointed Professor of Physics and Mineralogy at the École des Mines, before becoming Professor of Mineralogy at the Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle, where he also continued his mineralogical research and considerably enlarged the mineral collection. In 1809, Haüy also took up the chair of mineralogy at the Sorbonne, which he held until his death in 1822.

The Traite de Minéralogie, published in 1801, is considered his most influential work on mineralogy and crystallography. In it, Hauÿ established a system of mineralogical classification and crystal structure and led future researchers towards the laws of rational indices.

In this work, Hauÿ made the science of crystallography the basis for determining mineral species. His mathematical approach to the presentation of crystallographic facts provided for the first time an exact basis for mineralogy and the identification of mineral species.

The first volume contains his theory of crystals, and in the following three volumes he developed the classification of minerals and revised their nomenclature.

“This is the man who truly founded and developed the science of crystallography and, as Adam says, was simple, modest, a lover of learning, whose attention was directed to the study of mineralogy almost by chance. In handling a group of calcite crystals at the home of a friend, Haüy accidentally dropped them. When he re-examined the broken prism, he noticed a new form, bounded by faces a smooth and shining as the original. ‘A new light broke up in the subject'” (Hoover).

Spines expertly restored. A very attractive set of this rare edition.

The first text volume has the extract of the copyright laws printed on the verso of the half-title.