The first page of the first printed edition of Euclid's Elements of Geometry. It was printed in Venice in 1482, twenty seven years after the first book was ever printed. Euclid, who lived around 300 BC is one of the best known and most influential Greek mathematicians. The Elements of Geometry, a treatise contained in thirteen books, organised the work of many previous Greek geometricians as well as containing many new discoveries that Euclid had made himself. Euclid attempted to establish a fully rigorous system in which each theorem was proved on the basis of its predecessors, having as a starting point a set of self-evident axioms.