Whiston, William; An Account of a Surprizing Meteor, Seen in the Air, March the 6th 17 15/16 at Night, 1716. London, J. Senex, 1716. Octavo, pp. 78.

The work is complete and in a 19th century calf and marbled boards with gilt titles. The binding is tight and clean, text is very clean. In very good condition.

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William Whiston (1667 – 1752) was an English theologian, historian, and mathematician. In 1701 he resigned his Rectorship to become Isaac Newton's substitute as Lucasian lecturer at Cambridge and in 1702 succeeded Isaac Newton as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge. Whiston was an early advocate, along with Edmond Halley, of the periodicity of comets and also argued that comets were responsible for past catastrophes in earth's history which he made a focal point in his treatise “A New Theory of the Earth”. That treatise earned Whiston the praise of both Newton and Locke.
Whiston studied both comets and meteors attempting to understand the phenomena of both. His work on the meteor of 1716 was based on an sighting made by Whiston and a colleague while returning to London from Highgate. Whiston divides his short treatise into six parts: 1. A description of the meteor from his own observations. 2. Historical Accounts of similar meteors. 3. Phenomena associated with the 1716 sighting. 4. Conjectures on the sighting. 5. Reasons why previous solutions to the meteors are imperfect. 6. Inferences and observations on these premises. The work is very rare.