Justus von Liebig died in the spring of 1873 as the most famous chemist in the world. The year after, his publisher gathered the great speeches into this volume: the addresses on the study of the natural sciences, on Francis Bacon, on induction and deduction. The collection ends with Liebig at his warmest, an address on France delivered in the shadow of the war of 1870. He remembers being a boy of twenty in Paris when Gay-Lussac took him "as his collaborator and pupil into his private laboratory; my whole course of life was determined by it," and he closes by pleading that the "indissoluble brotherhood" of science be the ground on which French and German minds meet again, against all the bitterness of "a war forced upon us." The collection closes with an appeal to scientific friendship.
The copy carries its own second story, stamped in violet inside the cover: KÁRMÁN MÓR könyve, Hungarian for "the book of Mór Kármán." Kármán (1843–1915) was the great educational reformer of Hungary, founder of Budapest's famous Minta Gymnasium, the model school that trained a generation of scientific minds. His son, raised among his father's books, was Theodore von Kármán, the aerodynamicist of supersonic flight, after whom the boundary of space, the Kármán line, is named. A volume of Liebig from that household is a small object with a long trajectory.
The binding is the modest contemporary one: half cloth, the spine in purple-brown cloth lettered in gilt, the sides in black pebble-grain cloth of the kind embossed to imitate leather, the edges marbled in blue. The spine head is chipped, the corners worn, and the rear inner hinge has cracked, showing its gauze backing, though the sewing holds and the book opens well. Clean within, without annotations.
Provenance: Violet ownership stamp "KÁRMÁN MÓR könyve" to the endpaper: Mór Kármán (1843–1915), Hungarian educational reformer, founder of the Minta Gymnasium, father of Theodore von Kármán.
Reden und Abhandlungen. Leipzig and Heidelberg, 1874. The posthumous collection of Justus von Liebig's addresses and essays, published the year after his death. With the ownership stamp of Mór Kármán, father of the aerodynamicist Theodore von Kármán.
LIEBIG, Justus von (1803–1873). Reden und Abhandlungen. Leipzig and Heidelberg: C. F. Winter'sche Verlagshandlung, 1874.
Physical Description: 8vo. 334 pp.; one opening blank and two terminal blanks. Marbled edges.
Binding: Contemporary half cloth, spine in purple-brown cloth lettered and ruled in gilt, black pebble-grain (leather-grain) cloth sides. Spine head chipped, corners worn with boards showing, rear inner hinge cracked with the mull exposed, the sewing sound.
Condition: Clean and fresh within; light spotting to endleaves.
Justus von Liebig died in the spring of 1873 as the most famous chemist in the world. The year after, his publisher gathered the great speeches into this volume: the addresses on the study of the natural sciences, on Francis Bacon, on induction and deduction. The collection ends with Liebig at his warmest, an address on France delivered in the shadow of the war of 1870. He remembers being a boy of twenty in Paris when Gay-Lussac took him "as his collaborator and pupil into his private laboratory; my whole course of life was determined by it," and he closes by pleading that the "indissoluble brotherhood" of science be the ground on which French and German minds meet again, against all the bitterness of "a war forced upon us." The collection closes with an appeal to scientific friendship.
The copy carries its own second story, stamped in violet inside the cover: KÁRMÁN MÓR könyve, Hungarian for "the book of Mór Kármán." Kármán (1843–1915) was the great educational reformer of Hungary, founder of Budapest's famous Minta Gymnasium, the model school that trained a generation of scientific minds. His son, raised among his father's books, was Theodore von Kármán, the aerodynamicist of supersonic flight, after whom the boundary of space, the Kármán line, is named. A volume of Liebig from that household is a small object with a long trajectory.
The binding is the modest contemporary one: half cloth, the spine in purple-brown cloth lettered in gilt, the sides in black pebble-grain cloth of the kind embossed to imitate leather, the edges marbled in blue. The spine head is chipped, the corners worn, and the rear inner hinge has cracked, showing its gauze backing, though the sewing holds and the book opens well. Clean within, without annotations.
Provenance: Violet ownership stamp "KÁRMÁN MÓR könyve" to the endpaper: Mór Kármán (1843–1915), Hungarian educational reformer, founder of the Minta Gymnasium, father of Theodore von Kármán.
Reden und Abhandlungen. Leipzig and Heidelberg, 1874. The posthumous collection of Justus von Liebig's addresses and essays, published the year after his death. With the ownership stamp of Mór Kármán, father of the aerodynamicist Theodore von Kármán.
LIEBIG, Justus von (1803–1873). Reden und Abhandlungen. Leipzig and Heidelberg: C. F. Winter'sche Verlagshandlung, 1874.
Physical Description: 8vo. 334 pp.; one opening blank and two terminal blanks. Marbled edges.
Binding: Contemporary half cloth, spine in purple-brown cloth lettered and ruled in gilt, black pebble-grain (leather-grain) cloth sides. Spine head chipped, corners worn with boards showing, rear inner hinge cracked with the mull exposed, the sewing sound.
Condition: Clean and fresh within; light spotting to endleaves.
