ニュートンの貴重な初版本、コルシカ島の図書館で発見

【アジャクシオＡＦＰ＝時事】アイザック・ニュートンの著書で、現代物理学の基礎となった運動3法則を論じている「自然哲学の数学的諸原理」のラテン語で書かれた初版本が、地中海の仏領コルシカ島の図書館で発見された。（写真はバニーナ・シリンスキーシクマトフ氏）
　アジャクシオにあるフェッシュ遺産図書館の保存責任者、バニーナ・シリンスキーシクマトフ氏によると、同図書館の創設者でフランス皇帝ナポレオン・ボナパルトの弟リュシアン・ボナパルトによる目録を調べていた時に見つけたという。「表紙は少し傷ついているが、中の状態はいい」と話している。
　「自然哲学の数学的諸原理」は１６８７年に出版された。後に英語版が出されたが、オリジナルのラテン語版は収集家の間で珍重されている。【翻訳編集ＡＦＰＢＢＮｅｗｓ】
〔ＡＦＰ＝時事〕（2020/03/05-14:50）

A first-edition copy of Isaac Newton's groundbreaking book laying out his three laws of motion, which became the foundation for modern physics, has been found at a library on the French island of Corsica.
Vannina Schirinsky-Schikhmatoff, director of conservation at the Fesch public heritage library in Ajaccio, said she discovered the copy of the 17th-century work while studying an index from the library's founder Lucien Bonaparte -- one of Napoleon's brothers.
I found the Holy Grail in the main room, hidden in the upper shelves, she told AFP this week.
The cover has a little damage but inside it's in excellent condition -- this is the cornerstone of modern mathematics, she said.
The Latin text, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy) was first published by Newton in 1687.
The renowned physicist was famously inspired by seeing an apple fall from a tree in his garden in Grantham, England, which sparked his elaborations of the classical laws of gravity, motion and optics.
English translations were published later, but the original editions remain prized by collectors.
A Latin edition sold for $3.7 million at an auction held by Christie's a few years ago, and that's the one at the Ajaccio library, Schirinsky-Schikhmatoff said, referring to a December 2016 sale in New York to an undisclosed buyer.
It is not the first rare find at the Fesch library since an in-depth review of its holdings began a few years ago.
In 2018, Schirinsky-Schikhmatoff unveiled a Thesaurum Hyeroglyphicorum study of Egyptian hieroglyphics dating from 1610 -- some 200 years before France's Jean-Francois Champollion deciphered parts of the Rosetta Stone.