Personal and historical magic squares

Parametrizations of 4 × 4 squares which allow to generate individual examples, using birthdays or other personally preferred numbers are developed. This will be done for magic squares that are delightful, perfect, skew symmetric, most perfect and pandiagonal (also called diabolic). Furthermore, the parametrizations explain the construction of famous historical magic squares. Also an idea for an artwork containing mathematics is given, called MathArt. 1 Historical Introduction Magic squares are always of interest to people irrespective of age and their acquaintance with mathematics. Earlier, magic squares appeared often on temples, in paintings and on mythological objects. Magic squares first appeared in ancient China, before they became an active subject westwards. They played a remarkable role in India, later in the Arabic world, in medieval Islam and finally in Europe and America. Legend has it that the first magic square is over 4000 years old. It is said that 12 Albert Fässler and Alagu S. Somasundaram the mystical Emperor Yu in China discovered small black and white circles on the shell of a turtle that had emerged from the Lo river. The arrangement of the circles representing the numbers 1 to 9 were structured in a special 3 × 3 square (see [2]). Here is the modern design of the so-called Lo Shu magic square