One of the many cool people to live here in Edinburgh was James Stirling. You may know him from some of his contributions to math, like 'Stirling’s formula' - a good approximation to the factorial function. But his library is going on sale on Thursday the 23rd of October.
"Stirling's principal and most famous work, the Methodus Differentialis (1730), features in three separate incarnations in the auction: his holograph manuscript, valued at between £40,000 to £60,000, his personally corrected first edition (£20,000 - £30,000), and a first edition in English with letters from the translator (£3,000 - £5,000).
Stirling’s copy of Newton’s Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, which is generally considered to be the most important scientific book ever published, is another highlight of the auction. It’s estimated to fetch between £10,000 and £20,000."
If you are extremely rich, like the sort of person who can afford a Picasso, these are dirt cheap. It's shocking, but it's actually sort of nice that most extremely rich people don't collect books like this, so libraries and ordinary rich people can afford them.
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/25548234.james-stirling-library-auctioned-edinburgh/
