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Life
Mathematician by day, poet of doubt by night. He solved cubic equations and asked what any of it was for.
Astronomer, mathematician, and ethicist who saved a library from the Mongols and built the observatory that reformed the model of the heavens.
Connection
Omar Khayyam the parallel postulate carried forward Nasir al-Din al-Tusi — Al-Tusi took up Khayyam's attempt to prove Euclid's parallel postulate, and the chain of near-proofs the two advanced fed into the eventual recognition that the postulate is independent.
Ideas
Words
“Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life.”
“The end of philosophy is to order the soul as the astronomer orders the heavens: by measure, not by wish.”
Key Moments
1048 CE
Born in Nishapur
c. 1070 CE
Geometric Solutions to Cubics
1079 CE
Reform of the Calendar
1131 CE
Death in Nishapur
1201 CE
Born in Tus
1259 CE
The Maragheh Observatory
c. 1260 CE
The Tusi Couple
1274 CE
Death in Baghdad
Works
The Rubaiyat
The Nasirean Ethics