Runkle, J.D., editor. The Mathematical Monthly. Vol. III, Nos. I through IX, and No. XII, the final issue of the periodical (Cambridge, New York and London, Oct. 1860-June 1861, and Sept. 1861) All in original wrappers except for the first issue. With a separately-issued index to Volume III. Ownership notation of the distinguished Paris mathematics and science publishing house, Mallet-Bachelier.
These are ten of the last twelve issues of this early mathematics journal, begun in 1859 by mathematician and astronomer John Daniel Runkle, then on the staff of the government-funded Nautical Almanac, who later became President of M.I.T. Runkle’s Monthly, far ahead of its time, ceased to exist, as Runkle himself put it, because of the “present disturbed state of public affairs” - the outbreak of the nation-rending Civil War. In its three years of existence, it attracted essays by some of the foremost American mathematicians and scientists – many were both - of the mid-19th century. These issues include contributions by Hungarian refugee Anthony Vallas, then confrere of future General William Tecumseh Sherman at a Louisiana military school; George William Hill, who calculated lunar orbits and later headed the American Mathematical Society; R.C.Matthewson, who pursued astronomical studies as government surveyor of Gold Rush California; Simon Newcomb, astronomer, physicist, economist, even science fiction author; physicist Arthur W. Wright, then a Yale doctoral student, who would one day produce the first X-Ray photograph in America. Most notable was the “grandfather of American mathematics”, Yale Professor Hubert Anson Newton, scholar of the laws of meteors and comets whose “Geometrical Construction of Certain Curves” appeared in the Monthly weeks after the fall of Fort Sumter. Also, as war began, the Monthly upstaged European competitors by publishing Sir John Herschel’s own “Catalogue” of his writings, the first bibliography of the work of that eminent British mathematician, astronomer, chemist and experimental photographer, prepared by the great man himself. Rare original imprints of an historically-significant American scholarly journal.