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Most scholarly articles that have some substance have a reference section at the end. The purpose of this section is to support scientific statements and to aid readers who would like to learn more about some of the article’s sub-topics. In rare occasions, authors use the reference section to show their scholastic diligence by citing some very old  or obscure sources. An example would be to include Laplace’s or Poisson’s equations in your paper, where relevant to electromagnetics, and then cite Maxwell’s Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism from the 1870s.  These are basic electromagnetics equations that are part of standard physics and engineering textbooks, which should be cited instead of Maxwell’s works. The rationale is that modern books are much easier to locate and are much easier to read. On the other hand, a good reason to cite Maxwell in a paper would be to discuss some particular part that is either unavailable or is contrasted to modern literature.

The purpose of this post is to present the best selling mathematical textbook in known history: Euclid’s Elements of Geometry. This contains a reproduction of the original Greek text along side a translation to modern English. Much of the contents of this tome are covered in typical high-school curricula, however, if you want to bolster your appearance of scholarship, this is probably one of the oldest works that anyone in the sciences will ever cite.

( elements.pdf )

 
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