Maggs Bros.

A very fine set of these popular scientific lectures by Matthias Gabler (1736-1805). The text is arranged across five thematic sections with continuous pagination but each with individual titles pages. Complete sets of the first editions are rare. OCLC lists Yale and Smithsonian only in North America.

‘Matthias Gabler became a member of the Jesuit order in 1754, and studied philosophy in Ingolstadt and theology in Dillingen. In 1770, Gabler was ordained and appointed professor of philosophy at Ingolstadt. From 1772, he also taught mathematics as well as theoretical and experimental physics. He became a member of the Academy of Sciences at Erfurt and of the Gelehrte Gesellschaft at Jena. In 1781, he left academia and became a priest in Wemding in 1782. According to Bosl, Gabler was removed from the university because he had been a Jesuit. Gabler’s writings mostly deal with physics, with an emphasis on electricity and magnetism’ (Dictionary of Eighteenth-Century German Philosophers).