The Zen of Magic Squares, Circles, and Stars
Subtitle: An Exhibition of Surprising Structures across Dimensions.
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: January 1, 2002
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 400
ISBN-13: 9780691070414
Subjects: Geometry; Popular science; Recreations & Games; Mathematics; Science/Mathematics; History of Science and Medicine, Philosophy of Science; Mathematics / History; Physics; Magic squares; Mathematical recreations
First sentence: When you gaze at magic squares with their amazing properties and hidden symmetries, it's sometimes difficult to believe that there are easy-to-remember ways to construct many of them using simple rules.
Description: "This is the most comprehensive and exciting book in many decades on magic squares - arrays filled with numbers or letters in particular arrangements. Clifford Pickover offers a colorful history of these and similar structures, their construction, and classification along with a remarkable variety of newly discovered objects ranging from ornate inlaid magic cubes to hypercubes.

He explains why Chinese emperors, Babylonian astrologer-priests, prehistoric cave people in France, and ancient Mayans of the Yucatan were convinced that magic squares held the secret of the universe."--BOOK JACKET.