Posted on Monday 21 April 2008
Christie’s South Kensington is offering over 400 highlights from the library of Swedish collector Andras Gedeon, which will go on sale on the 23rd April from 2pm. Author of 'Science and Technology in Medicine: An Illustrated Account Based on Ninety-Nine Landmark Publications from Five Centuries' (2006), Gedeon's collection includes major works by Descartes, Darwin, Rutherford and Einstein, and key texts in the development of our understanding of subjects as diverse as DNA, anaesthesia and global warming.
Gedeon is an engineer who worked for many years in the medical equipment industry and such multidisciplinary experience is reflected in the breadth of his collection, which straddles the fields of medicine, technology and pure science. The collection encompasses everything from the first full account of the discovery and construction of the telescope – Pierre Borel’s [‘Petro Borello’] De vero telescopii inventore … (The Hague: A. Vlacq, 1655-6; estimate: £15,000-20,000) – to a copy of the May 1974 issue of IEEE Transactions on Communications (Volume Com-22, no.5), containing an article by the American scientists Vinton G. Cerf and Robert E. Kahn called ‘A Protocol for Packet Network Intercommunication’ which is generally accepted as the founding document of the Internet (signed at the top of the article by both Cerf and Kahn; estimate: £3,000-4,000).
The view is free and open to the general public from Saturday 19 April:
The view will close at 12noon on Wednesday 23 April.