ABSTRACT
Although Fermat and Descartes played occasionally with magic squares, their work with them was not noteworthy. Leonhard Euler , however, brought the puzzle to a new height. His most famous 8 × 8 magic square not only has all rows and columns that add up to the magic sum of 260; each quarter of the square is also a magic square in itself with each row and column adding up to 130. As if that were not enough, as Euler constructed his magic square, he began with the number one in the upper left corner, and then he generated the square by placing the numbers consecutively in the knight’s move in chess, moving up or down two and to the right or left one, or up or down one, and to the right or left two, throughout the whole square. As a good chess player, Euler included the knight’s move as an amusing wrinkle to his square.
