Omar Khayyam
Persian mathematician and poet (1048-1131) · Academics · Died at 83
Omar Khayyam is read about 1,915 times a day, in 117 languages.
A typical day, 30 days to 27 October 2026
The middle day of the days counted, so one week of news cannot move it. The line under it is the last 400 days, one point a day.
Something wrong?He solved cubic equations centuries before Descartes got credit, built a calendar so precise it's still running a thousand years later, and somehow became most famous in the West for wine-soaked quatrains he may or may not have written.
Also in Deutsch
Photos 8
In their own words 10
, By the help of God and with His precious assistance, I say that Algebra is a scientific art.
Whoever thinks algebra is a trick in obtaining unknowns has thought it in vain. No attention should be paid to the fact that algebra and geometry are different in appearance.
Give me a flagon of red wine, a book of verses, a loaf of bread, and a little idleness.
About this person
Omar Khayyam was born in 1048 in Nishapur, Iran, during the Seljuk era and the time of the First Crusade. As a mathematician, he cracked the general solution for third-degree polynomials using intersecting conic sections - work that would later be attributed to Descartes, though Khayyam's geometric method adhered strictly to the rule of homogeneity. He also probed the foundations of Euclid's parallel axiom, describing what's now called the Khayyam-Saccheri quadrilateral in his 11th-century treatise on Euclid's postulates. In astronomy, he calculated the solar year with startling precision and designed the Jalali calendar, a solar system with a 33-year intercalation cycle that became the basis for the Persian calendar still in use today. A tradition grew of attributing Persian quatrains to him, poetry that reached English readers through Edward FitzGerald's 1859 translation, which rode the wave of fin de siècle Orientalism to unlikely fame.
Academics born in the 1040s 2
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