A collection of historical scientific writings owned by Richard Green of Long Island, a retired physician and amateur astronomer, will be put up for sale next week at Christie's auction house in Manhattan. Included among the 347 lots are works by Copernicus, Darwin, Descartes, Newton, Freud and Kepler, as well as the first phone book.

Harmonia Macrocosmica, by the 17th-century Dutch-German cartographer Andreas Cellarius, is a beautiful star atlas, with double-truck hand-colored plates. Photo: Christie's

Nicolaus Copernicus's book "De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium" ("On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres"). In it, the Polish astronomer laid out his theory that the Earth and other planets go around the Sun, contravening a millennium of church dogma that the Earth was the center of the universe. Photo: Christie's

A first edition of Charles Darwin's "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection" is expected to sell for as much as $80,000. Photo: Christie's

One lot includes 130 reprints from Albert Einstein's collection of his scientific papers, including his first one on relativity. Photo: Christie's

Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica explained the universal laws of gravitation and motion for the first time. Photo: Christie's

The directory for the world's first commercial phone system, Volume 1, No. 1, published in New Haven by the Connecticut District Telephone Company in November 1878. It noted that future issues would be published "from time to time, as the nature of the service requires." Photo: Christie's

Lire l'article "Among Scientific Treasures, a Gem" de DENNIS OVERBYE in http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/10/science/10auct.html