A Tract on Crystallography designed for the use of Students in the University

Description:

First edition. Very scarce. 'The following Tract contains an investigation of the general geometrical properties of the systems of planes by which crystals are bounded, and of the formulæ for calculating their dihedral angles, indices and elements, given without demonstration in the last edition of Phillips' Mineralogy, or of equivalent expressions in a more convenient shape. To these have been added some theorems which appeared in the Philosophical Magazine for 1857, 1858, and 1859. The last two chapters contain concise investigations of the general properties of crystalline forms by the methods of ordinary and of analytical Geometry … The Tract, therefore, besides containing all the theorems of Mathematical Crystallography usually required in calculating the angles of crystals, their elements, and the symbols of their faces, will form, it is hoped, a useful supplement to the Mineralogy, and also to the Crystallography published by the author in 1839.' - Preface.

Written as an introduction to the author's famous work A Treatise on Crystallography (1839), this volume contains the derivations and proofs of the crystallographic calculations used to produce the Miller Indices, a notation system still used today to describe crystal faces and orientations. There are also some additional theorems concerning crystalline properties in general, which were not published in the original Treatise. (Schuh, Mineralogy and Crystallography: An Annotated Biobibliography 1469-1909, 2007).

William Hallowes Miller (1801-1880) was Professor of mineralogy at the University of Cambridge, 1832-1870 and laid the foundations of modern crystallography.

Schuh 3353.

Condition

8vo, orig. brown cloth, spine worn with minor loss to head, short splits/tears to joints in several places. Bookplate of the Herbert Lister Bowman Library, Laboratory of Mineralogy, University of Oxford. Originally from library of Charles Judson, with his signature.