[attach id=634807 size="medium" align="right"][/attach]

The front page of the very first printed version of the mathematical treatise Elements. The Elements is a 13-volume book entirely written by Euclid of Alexandria (circa 300BC). This treatise is considered to contain the very first study of prime numbers, which Euclid defines in Book 7, Definition 11 as ‘those which are measured by a unit alone’. He also proves important results on prime numbers, such as his famous theorem in Book 9, Proposition 20, asserting that ‘prime numbers are more than any assigned multitude of prime numbers’ – in other words, there are infinitely many prime numbers. The version of the Elements in the photo is in both Greek and Latin and was published in 1573 in Paris. It is currently preserved in the Archives and Special Collections of Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania. An online version of an English translation of the entire Elements is available for free at https://mathcs.clarku.edu/~djoyce/java/elements/elements.html and is maintained by Prof. David Joyce of Clark University, Worcester. Photo: https://www.maa.org/sites/default/files/images/upload_library/46/Swetz_2012_Math_Treasures/Dickinson/EuclidisElementorum_title.png

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.