Omar Khayyám

Ghiyāth al-Dīn Abū al-Fatḥ ʿUmar ibn Ibrāhīm Nīsābūrī (18 May 1048 – 4 December 1131), commonly known as Omar Khayyam, was a polymath, known for his contributions to mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, and poetry. He was born in Nishapur, the initial capital of the Seljuk Empire. As a scholar, he was contemporary with the rule of the Seljuk dynasty around the time of the First Crusade. As a mathematician, he is most notable for his work on the classification and solution of cubic equations, where he provided geometric solutions by the intersection of conics. Khayyam also contributed to the understanding of the parallel axiom. As an astronomer, he calculated the duration of the solar year with remarkable precision and accuracy, and designed the Jalali calendar, a solar calendar with a very precise 33-year intercalation cycle, that provided the basis for the Persian calendar that is still in use after nearly a millennium. There is a tradition of attributing poetry to Omar Khayyam, written in the form of quatrains (rubāʿiyāt ). This poetry became widely known to the English-reading world in a translation by Edward FitzGerald (Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, 1859), which enjoyed great success in the Orientalism of the fin de siècle. Life Omar Khayyam was born in Nishapur—a metropolis in Khorasan province, of Persian ancestry, in 1048. In medieval Persian texts he is usually simply called Omar Khayyam. Although open to doubt, it has often been assumed that his forebears followed the trade of tent-making, since Khayyam means tent-maker in Arabic. The historian Bayhaqi, who was personally acquainted with Khayyam, provides the full details of his horoscope: "he was Gemini, the sun and Mercury being in the ascendant[...]". This was used by modern scholars to establish his date of birth as 18 May 1048.