Omar Khayyam

Omar Khayyam (1048–1131) was a Persian mathematician, astronomer and poet, born at Nishapur in Khorasan. Under the Seljuk sultan Malik Shah he helped reform the calendar, producing one more accurate than the Gregorian, and his Treatise on Demonstration of Problems of Algebra classified and solved cubic equations geometrically. The quatrains, or rubaiyat, attributed to him circulated in Persian for centuries and are of uncertain authorship; Edward FitzGerald's free English version of 1859 made them one of the most quoted poems in the language and fixed the image of Omar as a skeptical lover of wine and the passing hour. He is buried at Nishapur.