Omar Khayyam

Who is Omar Khayyam?

Ghiyath al-Din Abu'l-Fath Umar ibn Ibrahim al-Khayyam Nishapuri, known as Omar Khayyam, was a Persian polymath born in Nishapur in northeastern Iran. He made significant contributions to mathematics, particularly in the classification and geometric solution of cubic equations, and wrote an important commentary on the difficulties in Euclid's postulates. As an astronomer, he led work on the Jalali calendar, a solar calendar of remarkable accuracy commissioned under the Seljuk sultan Malik-Shah. In the Western world, Khayyam is best known as a poet through the Rubaiyat, a collection of quatrains popularized by Edward FitzGerald's 19th-century English translation, though the exact attribution of many quatrains remains debated by scholars. The poems reflect on the transience of life, fate, and the pleasures of the present moment. His tomb in Nishapur is a celebrated monument of modern Iran.

Sources: Omar Khayyam, Treatise on Demonstration of Problems of Algebra (c. 1070) · Edward FitzGerald (trans.), Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, 1859 · Encyclopaedia Iranica, entry 'Khayyam, Omar'