Question: Can you suggest some classical papers about elliptic curves? I
want to read the masters.
Answer: These are my favorites:Cassels: Diophantine equations with special reference to
elliptic curves.
Lang, Tate: Principal homogeneous spaces over abelian varieties
Birch: Elliptic curves over Q: A progress report
Birch & SD: Elliptic curves and modular forms (in "Antwerp IV")
Swinnerton-Dyer: The Conjectures of Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer, and of Tate
Tate: The Arithmetic of Elliptic Curves
Tate: On the Conjectures of Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer
and a Geometric Analogue