Regulars - Columnist: The Eccentric Engineer. Art - Mathematical arty adventures in the Division of the Plane.

MAURITS ESCHER, known as 'Mauk' to his friends, grew up in an engineering family in the Netherlands. His father George was a well-respected civil engineer who had travelled to Japan to oversee the restoration of the Yodo river and the building of the Mikuni harbour. His mother was the daughter of a government minister who had fulfilled George's eccentric requirements for marriage – fulfilling the equation v = 1/2m + 10, where v was the age of the woman, and m the age of the husband.