Omar Khayyam

Omar Khayyam (1048 to 1131) was a Persian polymath from Nishapur in the Seljuk empire, remembered as a mathematician, astronomer, philosopher and poet. In mathematics he gave the first general geometric treatment of cubic equations, finding their roots as intersections of conic sections and taking care to keep his constructions homogeneous with a chosen unit length, a method often credited later to Descartes. In his commentary on the difficulties in Euclid's postulates he studied the parallel axiom and described the quadrilateral now called the Khayyam-Saccheri quadrilateral. Working at an observatory in Isfahan under the sultan Malik-Shah, he helped reform the Persian calendar and measured the length of the solar year with striking accuracy, which underlies the Jalali calendar and the Persian calendar still used today. Poetry in quatrains is attributed to him and became famous in English through Edward FitzGerald's 1859 translation, though the attribution is traditional. He died in Nishapur in 1131 and is buried there.