Product Description

In "Nine Fixed Points in the Wind", internationally renowned structural engineer Cecil Balmond travels into a semi-mystical world to unlock a secret of numbers that has never been told. Through the eyes of Enjil, the boy mathematician, he re-examines the arithmetic of his childhood and discovers behind it a remarkable new mathematical structure that we can all appreciate -yet that will intrigue scientists and mathematicians. The worlds of Enjil and that of the reader travel in parallel. As Enjil is challenged by a spirit to solve the riddle, "What is the fixed point of the wind?", the reader is introduced to strange coincidences in the world of numbers that appear to be predescribed in myth, legend and religion across the world's history. The key seems to be the number nine. On a journey of discovery, Enjil leads us deeper into an inner world in search of the solution. It describes a form - at first linear - then circular - until finally a beautifully spiralling mandala is revealed that links all the coincidences in a single structure and opens a gateway to discoveries beyond. Cecil Balmond is a man at the top of his profession making the most flamboyant ideas of the leading avant garde architects work. His research into form provokes new possibilities in architecture. Through his profession, he has gained a remarkable perception that is uniquely attuned to understanding the structures required within buildings at the cutting edge of contemporary architecture. Recently he chanced to rethink the arithmetic we all use. The results will delight all of us who remember struggling to learn our tables by rote. It is a new theorem of hidden numbers - but it is so simple.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #908993 in Books
• Published on: 1998-05-01
• Format: Illustrated
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 232 pages

Reader from Haifa, Israel - 13 October 1998
First of allow me to congratulate you on a most inspiring book ... and thank you... for the book you have wrote.

Reader's comment from architect at New Haven - September 1998
Thanks so much for the wonderful book - mysterious and lucid and a great telling of this fantastic adventure.

New Statesman 18th September 1998
"With wit and skill he (Balmond) manipulates figures like putty to show that his favourite number, nine, is very special indeed."

Customer Reviews

Magical, Mysterious Numeral Nine
What a beautiful little book. This is how I would have liked learning maths at school. If teachers could find a way of engaging children in looking at the "elegance" of numbers and their patterns, every child would want to be a mathematician. All "numerophobes" should read this and be enchanted by the quest of a young boy to prove himself to his teachers and the way you will fall in love with the number 9! I urge this to be on the national curriculum.

Brilliant
It captured the spiritual as well as the mathematical. A wonderful little read - for those who have an interest in what lies beyond numbers. A most unusual, charming book.

Enjil opens sesame
This little book is the story of Enjil, a boy on a journey. He takes us on his adventure, not through space but through that which articulates both time and space - mathematics. As the late Professor Brainard pointed out, the problem many have with mathematics is not its difficulty, but its simplicity. It's too simple to grasp, and yet profound in its simplicity! Instead of building wondrous edifices with mathematics, Enjil looks with clear, open eyes behind the foundations of number, the integers - and finds the number nine a wondrous lode. This journey takes him to the ancient world of myths, and to the magic world of Mandalas, Pascal's triangle and the Golden Section. Moreover, the book provides just a few short steps into the extraordinary world that Enjil finds. The author, Cecil Balmond, both explicitly and implicitly leaves much to be uncovered by the reader. For example, he leaves the connection between Pascal's Triangle and the Golden Section - the Fibonacci Series - unstated, but provides the old (Chinese) version of Pascal's triangle, where the Fibonacci Series is much more visible than in the modern format. All one has to do is go down the Chinese (right-angled) triangle at an angle of 45 degrees, and there it is! It is a book to return to, and savour - the sort I wish that I had been given when still a boy: one which presents the world of mathematics as one of delight, rather than the drudge it appears to be when presented by less gifted communicators than Mr Balmond. Buy it for your child, especially if your child is gifted like Enjil, for exactly the same reason as you would have bought the child a train set years before. To play with it yourself!