The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

Omar Khayyam (1048 - 1131) was a Persian mathematician, astronomer, and poet. As a mathematician, he is most notable for his work on the classification and solution of cubic equations, where he provided geometric solutions by the intersection of conics. As an astronomer, he composed a calendar which proved to be a more accurate computation of time than that proposed five centuries later by Pope Gregory XIII. Omar was born in Nishapur, in northeastern Iran. He spent most of his life near the court of the Karakhanid and Seljuq rulers in the period which witnessed the First Crusade. There is a tradition of attributing poetry to Omar Khayyam, written in the form of quatrains. This poetry became widely known to the English-reading world due to the translation by Edward FitzGerald (Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, 1859), which enjoyed great success in the Orientalism of the fin de siè cle.