Omar Khayyam
Mathematician by day, poet of doubt by night. He solved cubic equations and asked what any of it was for.
Omar Khayyam reformed the Persian calendar to a precision Europe would not match for centuries and gave geometric solutions to cubic equations that anticipated later algebra. He is remembered just as much for the quatrains gathered as the Rubaiyat, where the same mind turns from certainty to wine, mortality, and the silence of the heavens. Be gentle with the moment, the poems say, for it will not return, and the wise grave and the foolish one look alike in the end. Faith and skepticism sit together in him without resolving, which is part of why he still speaks.
Read in the Library
Places
Ideas
Words
“Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life.”
Works
Life & Moments
Born in Nishapur
Born in the Khorasan city of Nishapur, a center of Persian learning.
Geometric Solutions to Cubics
Gave geometric methods for solving cubic equations, advancing algebra beyond what Greek mathematics had reached.
Reform of the Calendar
Led the reform of the Persian calendar to a precision Europe would not match for five centuries, while writing on algebra and verse.
Death in Nishapur
Died leaving both precise astronomy and the doubtful, mortal quatrains of the Rubaiyat.
Influence
Influenced by
- Ibn Sina
Khayyam described himself as a student of Ibn Sina's philosophy, translated part of his work and defended his metaphysics, a side of him largely hidden behind the quatrains.
Influenced
- 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.
