Li Shanlan (1811–1882) was a native of Haining, Zhejiang. Although he belonged to a moderately fortunate family and was given formal training in the classics, he never passed government examinations beyond the first level, and had to give up the dream of entering officialdom. Under difficult circumstances, he took refuge in Shanghai, a city newly opened to foreign trade as a consequence of the Opium War.

From 1852 to 1859, Li went into service with the London Missionary Society who employed him as a co-translator of all sorts of Western scientific works. Missionaries had an insufficient mastery of literary Chinese and for that reason they had to rely on Chinese co-workers, even though these, like Li Shanlan, generally had no knowledge of foreign languages. During this period, Li translated with Alexander Wylie (1815–1887) Joseph Edkins (a Protestant Missionary 1829–1890) and others the part of Euclid’s Elements not yet translated into Chinese (Books 7–15), Augustus de Morgan’s Elements...