George J. Mitchell Department of Special Collections & Archives

Books & Other Printed Materials

Science History

In 1821 and 1823, substantial additions were made to the College Library. Through the efforts of Benjamin Vaughan (Bowd. Hon. 1812) of Hallowell, Maine, books from the library of his brother, Samuel, were deposited at the College. Many of them were works of science. More than 790 titles, including the 176 scientific works in the Bowdoin bequest, are in Special Collections today. The Main and Hatch Libraries also hold numerous other nineteenth-century works.

Notable works include:

General

• Archimedes

  Opera, Basel, 1544, which was the first Greek edition of his works.

• Isaac Newton

  Opticks, 1704, first printing, first issue

• Benjamin Franklin

  Some Account of the Success of Inoculation for the Small-Pox in England and America ..., London, 1759

• Georges Buffon

  Histoire Naturelle, Paris, 1749-1803, first edition

• Albert Einstein

  Papers on resolving the photoelectric effect and on the special theory of relativity in Annalen der Physik, Band 17 and 49, 1905 and 1916

Ornithological

• John James Audubon Collection
• John Gould

  The Birds of Great Britain, London, 1873, 5 v.; and A Century of Birds From the Himalaya Mountains, London, 1831.

• Alexander Wilson

  American Ornithology, the first three volumes, 1808-11, is in the Bowdoin Collection.

• Andrew Jackson Grayson

  Birds of the Pacific Slope

Botanical

• Leonhard Fuchs

  De Historia Stirpium Commentarii Insignes, Lugduni, 1551

• Charles de l'Ecluse

  Caroli Clvse Atrebatis … Rariorvm Plantarvm Historia, ex officina Plantiniana apud Ioannem Moretum, 1601

• William Jackson Hooker

  Musci Exotici ..., London, 1818

See also the following manuscript collections:

Kate Furbish Collection

John James Audubon Collection:

The College owns a small but distinguished collection of Audubon's works comprised of his Birds of America, London, 1827-38; the Ornithological Biography, Edinburgh, 1831-39; and the octavo edition of the Birds of America, New York and Philadelphia, 1840-44. These first editions are supplemented by other fine or unusual reproductions of the Birds and a few related manuscript pieces.