Mathematical Treasures - Peurbach's Elements of Arithmetic

Georg von Peurbach (1423-1461) was best known as an astronomer and as a teacher of and collaborator with Regiomontanus (1436-1476). About the 1544 copy of Peurbach's Arithmetices elementa whose title page is featured here, David Eugene Smith wrote:

"The arithmetic of Peurbach … is a brief treatise on the fundamental operations with integers and fractions, and contains a few simple applications. Peurbach was too profound a mathematician to have considered it a work of any importance, but it is probable that he wrote it for the benefit of students who were not yet prepared to take up his work in astronomy." (David Eugene Smith, Rara Arithmetica, 1908, p. 53, available via Google Books). 

The image above is provided courtesy of Columbia University Libraries, George Arthur Plimpton Collection.

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