Omar Khayyam

Omar Khayyam was born in 1048 at Nishapur in north-eastern Persia, and in his own lifetime he was above all a great mathematician and astronomer. He gave a systematic geometric solution of cubic equations and led the reform of the Persian calendar; the Jalali calendar he helped devise was more accurate than the later Gregorian. He was also a philosopher, versed in the thought of Avicenna. His quatrains circulated only among friends while he lived; not until the English poet Edward FitzGerald translated them in 1859 did they sweep the world and become the most famous work of Persian literature in the West.