18 JULY 1992, Page 33

Zero

the perfect figure where Mystery and Beauty intersect — and from that point on the heavens opened up like a casket of Mesopotamian rubies and all his calculations proved correct. The first time I saw you, poised like Nefertiti on the stairs, I became that obscure Babylonian mathematician who, deep in the Second Millennium BC, discovered Zero: in an empty space he placed

Peter Meinke