London: Taylor & Walton, 1847. First edition. Secretarial presentation copy, inscribed on the front free endpaper, “Professor Hargreave, From the author." The recipient was De Morgan’s colleague and former student, the mathematician and judge Charles James Hargreave; his marginal pencil annotations are present throughout. A Very Good copy. Octavo. With 16 pp. of publisher’s advertisements at rear. Original black cloth, spine lettered in gilt, spine and covers decoratively stamped in blind, yellow coated endpapers, edges uncut, binder’s ticket of Remnant & Edmonds on rear pastedown. Spine ends sometime partially-repaired, light wear to extremities, heads of joints starting, foxing to contents.

Hargreave (1820-1866) studied under De Morgan at University College, London, and in 1843 was appointed professor of jurisprudence at the same institution. He continued to contribute to mathematics alongside his judicial work and in 1849 was awarded the Royal Society’s Royal Medal for his essay on linear differential equations. The book was inherited by his nephew, Henry Hargreave Fawcett (1860-1943), whose ownership signature dated 1884 is on the front pastedown; Fawcett’s education was funded by Hargreave’s widow, Sarah (1830-1885).

His principal contribution to the field of mathematical logic, Formal Logic “is the work in which De Morgan took the first steps to codify logic into an algebraic system” (Tomash & Williams).

Tomash & Williams D35. Very Good (Item #8005)