The Old Library of the Uppsala Observatory
Note, that the rarest books of the collection is no longer stored with the Astronomy division, but is kept in safety storage in Carolina Rediviva.
Before the 18th century there existed no astronomical library belonging to the observatory. The books used by the astronomers were owned privately by the professors. During that century, however, two great donations of books and money for an observational library were made by the professors in observational astronomy Olof Hiorter (1686-1750) in 1747, and Fredrik Mallet (1728-1797) in 1795. These donations make the most important part of what we now call "the old library", i.e. our rare-book collection. The collection also includes, and did so even more in the old days, books on geography, cartography, military sciences and art theory and other topics.
As for the sizes of the donations they were quite impressive at that time and still are today. Hiorter's donation held about 1500 titles and several manuscripts. The manuscripts were all transfered to the university library more than seventy years ago. Mallet's donation was smaller and held about 900 titles. In addition to what the observatory actually purchased, the rest of the old collection was a third donation, that of professor Gustaf Svanberg (1802-1882) in 1882. A number of books (about 1200 volumes) not considered to be of any astronomical interest were deposited in the university library in 1886, and then of course, books have tended to just disappear over the centuries.
The stock of the old collection today consists of 3500 volumes, in round figures, ephemerides and periodicals uncounted. The catalogue holds some 3000 titles chronologically distributed as follows:
- 15th century 3 titles
- 16th century 148 titles
- 17th century 925 titles
- 18th century 852 titles
- 19th century 825 titles
A few examples of rare books from our collection will be given, but for a
start it might be interesting to hear what the donator Hiorter himself
had to say about his library:
"Within the whole science of astronomy,
there are no more authors missing than: Tacqueti Astronomicorum libri,
Hevelii Opera, except for his Selenograph, Mercurius in Sole visus and
Machinae coelestis pars prior, Flamsteed's Atlas coelestis and Historia
coelestis Brittanica".
His library represents a fine working collection
in mathematical astronomy at the end of the 17th century and it contains
an assembly of virtually all important ephemeris of the 16th and 17th
centuries.
Our oldest title is Tabulae astronomice by Alphonsus Rex which was printed in Venice in 1492 and consists of various astronomical tables. Among our other rare books is for example Calendarium romanum by Johann Stoeffler (1518) which has belonged to Bibliotheca Warmiensis in Frombork (Frauenburg), Poland and with notes in Copernicus own hand scribbled in it. That book was part of the great war booty brought home to Sweden in the 17th century. We have no copy of the first edition (1543) of Copernicus's own book De revolutionibus, but we do have one of the second (1566) with the letter to Werner included. That is one of the seven 16th century copies known according to professor Owen Gingerich, expert on the history of astronomy.
In our collection you can also find Galilei's Siderius nuncius in the first edition from 1610, and two copies of the first edition of Newton's Principia mathematica from 1687. One of those is the so called 3-line imprint and the other the 2-line imprint. All the classical titles by, for example, Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler are also represented in the library in, mostly, first editions.
Another rarity is Orbium coelestium hypotyposes (1573) by Dasypodius and we
also have a copy of J. Purbach's Theoricae novae planetarium (1550)
which is very interesting because it has lots of notes in it made by the
first professor in astronomy in Uppsala, Laurentius Paulinus Gothus
(1565 - 1646). They are the notes from which he gave his lectures on the
three world systems, i.e. the ptolemaic system, the copernican system and
the system of Tycho Brahe. More than a hundred years were to elapse before
any more lectures on the heliocentric system were given in Uppsala.
There is also an interesting collection of celestial atlases,
for example Bayers's Uranometria (1603).
The old library of the Uppsala astronomical observatory is today one of the four largest collections of old astronomical literature in the world.
Look also at this page on the history of astronomy in Uppsala.
(Page last updated ).