From: chenrich@mail.monmouth.com (Christopher J. Henrich)
Newsgroups: sci.math
Subject: Re: magic squares
Date: Thu, 05 Mar 1998 20:54:15 -0500

In article <6dn42e$734$1@clubserv.rp-online.de>, naphta@gmx.net wrote:

> Does someone know the general form of a magic square with n-rows? -
> if there exists one.
> Iam only familiar with the representation of a magic squares with
> 3-rows.

A bibliography on Magic Squares.

This is terribly incomplete.  The subject has attracted amateur and professional
attention for centuries, and the literature is enormous.  These books are
recent and relatively available.  (In fact, they have all been published
or reprinted by Dover Publications, and are available as sturdy, reasonably
priced trade paperbacks.  I have no connection with Dover except that of a
lifetime fan.)

W. S. Andrews, Magic Squares and Cubes.

William H. Benson and Oswald Jacoby, Magic Cubes: New Recre4ations.

William H. Benson and Oswald Jacoby, New Recreations with Magic Squares.

These two books devote substantial space to this topic among others:

W. W. Rouse Ball & H. S. M. Coxeter, Mathematical Recreations and Essays

M. Kraitchik, Mathematical Recreations.

The magic squares of order 4 are completely known: there are 880 of them.
See:

Kathleen Ollerenshaw and Herman Bondi, Magic squares of order 4, in the
_Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London_, Series A,
vol. 306 (1982) 443-532.

Last and least,
Christopher J. Henrich, Magic Squares and Linear Algebra, in the _American
Mathematical Monthly, vol. 98, No. 6, June-July 1991, 481-488.

-- 
Christopher J. Henrich
chenrich@mail.monmouth.com