Tomb of Omar Khayam, Neishapur, Iran.

The man known in English as the poet Omar Khayyám (May 18, 1048 - December 4, 1123, assumed dates) was born in Nishapur (or Naishapur) in Khorasan, Persia (Iran), and named Ghiyath al-Din Abu'l-Fath Umar ibn Ibrahim Al-Nisaburi al-Khayyami (al-Khayyami means "the tentmaker"). His name in Persian is "عمر خیام".

Omar Khayyam the mathematician

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.

Omar Khayyam the astronomer

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

Omar Khayyam and Islam

The philosophy of Omar Khayyam was quite different from official Islamic dogmas. He agreed with the existence of God but objected the notion that every particular event and phenomenon is the result of divine intervention. Instead he supported the view that laws of nature were explaining all particularities of the observed life. Multiple times he was asked by religious clerics to clarify his differences with Islam. Khayyam eventually made a hajj [pilgrimage] to Mecca in order to prove his loyalty.

Omar Khayyam the writer and poet

Omar Khayyám is famous today not 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 The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám in the English translations by Edward Fitzgerald (1809-1883).

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

See major article: The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám

See also: Persian literature

Miscellaneous

Omar's life is dramatized in the 1957 film Omar Khayyam starring Cornel Wilde, Debra Page, Raymond Massey, Michael Rennie, and John Derek.

There is also a passing reference to Omar in an episode of The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, which mentions his "Ruby Yacht".

External links

• The Rubaiyat (http://classics.mit.edu/Khayyam/rubaiyat.html)
• On Omar's solutions to cubic equations (http://jwilson.coe.uga.edu/emt669/Student.Folders/Jones.June/omar/omarpaper.html)
• Khayyam, Umar (http://www.angelfire.com/rnb/bashiri/Poets/Khayyam.html). A biography by Professor Iraj Bashiri, University of Minnesota.