Newton's Principia Mathematica.- Pfautz (Christoph) Acta Eruditorum Anno M DC LXXXVIII, 13 engraved plates, most folding, woodcut initials, ink stamp to title, bookplate to title verso, occasional spotting, including to plates, some light offsetting, library label to front pastedown, contemporary vellum, spine toned, 4to, Leipzig, J. Grossium and J.F. Gleditsch, 1688.

⁂ This edition of the Acta includes a first edition of the important early review of Newton's 'Principia' (1687); pp. 303-315. Of the four reviews which had appeared by the end of 1688, this review in the Acta was the most detailed, and was comprehensive enough to provide many in Europe without access to the Principia itself with a fairly full account of its contents (Gjertsen, Newton Handbook, 1986, p. 472), almost in the style of an extended table of contents. The Acta review is anonymous, but evidence now supports identification of the author as Christoph Pfautz (1645-1711), who being a professor of mathematics at the University of Leipzig, was able to grasp the principal features of Newton's treatment of limits, and to appreciate the significance of the purely mathematical features of Newton's presentation. Pfautz's review gained contemporary fame when it was cited by Leibniz in his own article, 'Tentamen de Motuum Coelestium Causis', in the Acta in 1689. This volume of the Acta also contains three articles by the physicist Denis Papin (1647-1713), two articles by the astronomer Gottfried Kirch (1639-1710) and three articles by the mathematician Jakob Bernoulli (1655-1705).