Few modern people can get away with a single name. A few may come to mind, but ancient history are full of those one named wonders. Euclid is one of the most recognizable names in history, and all he did was write a single book. It may have had 13 volumes, but it was a simple single title: Elements. The Elements of Geometry were written throughout Euclid's life in the middle 300s BC. Euclid lived during the Golden Age of Greece right after the famous - Plato- Socrates-Aristotle lineage. While he was older than Archimedes, he was standing on the shoulders of giants while studying in the famous city of Alexandria, Egypt. Not much is known about Euclid's personal life, but his book has become the most successful textbook in history. His analytical mind sorted and reasoned systematically from the simplest truths to the most complex properties in a single volume. It's surprising over 2000 years later to see how much we can understand, grow, and learn from the great teachers of long ago.
We mentioned reading the Elements last week as a way to practice building some word problem skills and appreciate the works of the great mathematicians that came before us. Standing on Euclid's shoulders to study geometry is not cheating, and it doesn't make geometry easier. As the famous story goes, the king Ptolemy asked Euclid if there was a shorter, easier way to study geometry and Euclid replied, "There is no royal road to Geometry!"