All together, these works represent a clear rational journey in the field of glycoscience. Some of the described works are “hidden” in literature but still full of valid conclusions and insights.
This chapter was designed with the idea to stimulate young and experienced glycoscientists with old seminal papers. From the definition of the term “carbohydrates” till the first Enzyme linked lectin assay, different papers have been described in this chapter. The naïve conclusions behind most of these works are still really “modern”. Reading about a colleague exploring colloidal particles as carrier for polysaccharides in 1931, or the impressive functional studies on different proteins and antibodies glycoforms, or the first comments and tables with lectins and their ligands in the 70’, is still important and useful to improve the design of scientific projects.
A modern multidisciplinary field like glycoscience cannot be easily described without the immense experimental works done in the past. There is always something important to learn from the past and this chapter is just a small collection of stimulating “old” papers.