Asimov's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology First Edition - Isaac Asimov - Bauman Rare Books

Asimov's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology

Isaac ASIMOV

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Asimov's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology

FIRST EDITION OF ASIMOV’S “MOST ELABORATE HISTORICAL ACCOUNT OF SCIENCE”

ASIMOV, Isaac. Asimov’s Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology. Garden City: Doubleday, 1964. Octavo, original cloth, original dust jacket.

First edition of Asimov’s “most elaborate historical account of science,” his important history of the lives and achievements of the 1000 greatest scientists from ancient times to the present.

“The most elaborate historical account of science I have yet attempted arose out of a suggestion made to me in 1961 by T. O’Conor Sloane of Doubleday… [He] asked me to do 250 short biographies of the most important scientist in history, arranged chronologically. In principle, that was easy, but it was clearly going to be a difficult task to pick out the 250 most important scientists, so I avoided the necessity of too many decisions by writing 1000 short biographies… Among the scientific biographies contained in the book were some that were as short as 100 words and others that were as long as 10,000 words, and I must admit that the choice of whom to include and how thoroughly to deal with him was entirely a matter of my own prejudices. If he were someone I liked, he got in a considerable length and that’s all there was to it” (Asimov, Opus 100, pp. 126-8). “As a scientific biographical text it remains unsurpassed, and is still used as a reference book in major libraries around the world” (White, Asimov: The Unauthorized Life, p. 173).

Price-clipped dust jacket. A fine copy.

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Aquatint Copperplate process by which the plate is “bitten” by exposure to acid. By changing the areas of the plate that are exposed and the length of time the plate is submerged in the acid bath, the engraver can obtain fine and varying shades of gray that closely resemble watercolor washes. Although the name contains the word “tint”, this is a black-and-white printing process; aquatint plates can often be hand colored, however.
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Wood-Engraving Engraving made with the graver or burin on the cross-section of a piece of boxwood; the harder wood and finer tools allow for more delicate, finely detailed images, while the block can still be set in the page alongside text and printed on the same stock as the text. While much older, wood engravings enjoyed an important renaissance in the late eighteenth century through Thomas Bewick and continued in popularity thorugh the nineteenth century.
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