How can I re-use someone's mathematics thesis without plagiarizing? I am writing a report for my master's research. One entire section of my report has been expertly written in someone else's PhD thesis, which happens to mostly take the form of a monograph on the subject.

I am not writing a research article, and they don't expect original research from me (or at least not much), but to be self-sufficient, my report needs to include some kind of quick overview of the subject. The problem is that now that I have read this thesis, I seem to not be able to more than heavily take inspiration from it.

Said thesis is available under the BSD3 license and I of course cite everything but I don't know how to approach what is basically copying a large amount of work.

My options seem to be:


Rewrite everything "my way" while citing the thesis. Considering it still would not be original work and would amount to just cleverly changing the original work wording and structure it feels intellectually dishonest.
Just clearly say "The following work is from X" and translate X exactly. This seems academically dishonest.
Forget about this section. Leave it alone for two months and hope that I forgot the thesis so that I can write with a clear mind and conscience.
I assume that someone's PhD thesis is a larger piece of work than a section of your report. Therefore, I don't see how you can avoid summarizing the thesis to fit your work. And while you are at it, you get the chance to deepen your understanding of the subject, because you will basically be writing a review of this someone's thesis in light of you report. That is a prospect you shouldn't miss, as in academia as well as in industry, you will be expected at some point of your career to "digest" some work and produce some implication of it.

Citing the thesis is a must, if it is used as a reference, there is no debating it. I would recommend writing your section "your way", but not just changing some details to mask your copy-paste trail. Put the material in the context of your report. You don't need a clear mind and conscience to use something you learned from a source. If it "looks like" the said thesis, that is not a problem, as long as it fits and you have gained significant understanding from it.

PS: If you did a simply copy-paste, you would likely find that the text still needs some polishing to fit your report. That can amount to a significant amount of work.