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Omar Khayyam

He was famous during his lifetime as a mathematician and astronomer who calculated how to correct the Persian calendar. On March 15, 1079, Sultan Jalal al-Din Malekshah Saljuqi (1072-1092) put Omar's corrected calendar into effect, as in Europe Julius Caesar had done in 46 B.C. with the corrections of Sosigenes, and as Pope Gregory XIII would do in February 1552 with Aloysius Lilius' corrected calendar (although Britain would not switch from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar until 1751, and Russia would not switch until 1918).

He is also well known for inventing the method of solving cubic equations by intersecting a parabola with a circle. Although his approach at achieving this had earlier been attempted by Menaechmus and others, Khayyám provided a generalization extending it to all cubics. In addition he discovered the binomial expansion, and authored proofs exploring properties of figures in non-euclidean geometry.

In 1073, the Malik-Shah, ruler of Isfahan, invited Khayyám to build and work with an observatory, along with various other distinguished scientists. Eventually, Khayyám very accurately (correct to within six decimal places) measured the length of the year as 365.24219858156 days.

He was famous in Persian and Islamic world for his astronomical observations. He built a (now lost) map of stars in the sky.

The philosophy of Omar Khayyám was quite different from official Islamic dogmas. It is not clear whether he believed in the existence of God or not, but he objected to the notion that every particular event and phenomenon was the result of divine intervention; nor did he believe in any Judgment Day or rewards and punishments after life. Instead he supported the view that laws of nature explained all phenomena of observed life. Religious officials asked him many times to explain his different views about Islam. Khayyám eventually was obliged to make a hajj [pilgrimage] to Mecca in order to prove he was a faithful follower of the religion.

Are scatter'd, and their mouths are stopt with Dust.

Oh, come with old Khayyam, and leave the Wise

Omar Khayyám is famous today not only for his scientific accomplishments, but for his literary works. He is believed to have written about a thousand four-line verses. In the English-speaking world, he is best known for in the English translations by Edward Fitzgerald (1809-1883).

Other people have also published translations of some of the rubáiyát ( means "quatrains"), but Fitzgerald's are the best known. Translations also exist in languages other than English.

Most recently, his life was dramatized by the Iranian-American director Kayvan Mashayekh in "The Keeper: the Legend of Omar Khayaam" playing in independent theaters since June 2005