Khayyam Facts for Kids

Quick facts for kids Omar Khayyam

Born	18 May 1048 Nishapur, Khorasan (present-day Iran)
Died	4 December 1131 (aged 83) Nishapur, Khorasan (present-day Iran)
Nationality	Persian

School	Islamic mathematics, Persian poetry, Persian philosophy
Main interests	Mathematics, Astronomy, Avicennism, Poetry

Omar Khayyam (18 May 1048 – 4 December 1131) was a Persian mathematician, astronomer, and poet. He was born in Nishapur, in northeastern Iran, and spent most of his life near the court of the Karakhanid and Seljuq rulers in the period which witnessed the First Crusade.

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. Khayyam also contributed to the understanding of the parallel axiom. As an astronomer, he designed the Jalali calendar, a solar calendar with a very precise 33-year intercalation cycle.

Khayyam seems to have been the first to conceive a general theory of cubic equations and the first to geometrically solve every type of cubic equation, so far as positive roots are concerned. The written work on algebra contains his work on cubic equations. It is divided into three parts: (i) equations which can be solved with compass and straight edge, (ii) equations which can be solved by means of conic sections, and (iii) equations which involve the inverse of the unknown.

The poetry attributed to Omar Khayyam has contributed greatly to his popular fame in the modern period as a direct result of the extreme popularity of the translation of such verses into English by Edward FitzGerald (1859). FitzGerald's Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam contains loose translations of quatrains (stanza) from The Bodleian manuscript. It enjoyed so much success that a bibliography compiled in 1929 listed more than 300 separate editions and many more have been published since.

The lunar crater Omar Khayyam was named in his honour in 1970, as was the minor planet 3095 Omarkhayyam discovered by Soviet astronomer Lyudmila Zhuravlyova in 1980. Omar's life is dramatized in the 1957 film Omar Khayyam.

Images for kids

Mausoleum of Omar Khayyam in Nishapur, Iran. Some of his rubáiyáts are used as calligraphic (taliq script) decoration on the exterior body of his mausoleum.
"Cubic equation and intersection of conic sections" the first page of a two-chaptered manuscript kept in Tehran University.
Omar Khayyam's construction of a solution to the cubic x3 + 2x = 2x2 + 2. The intersection point produced by the circle and the hyperbola determine the desired segment.
Rendition of a ruba'i from the Bodleian manuscript, rendered in Shekasteh calligraphy.
"A Ruby kindles in the vine", illustration for FitzGerald's Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam by Adelaide Hanscom Leeson (c. 1905).
"At the Tomb of Omar Khayyam" by Jay Hambidge (1911).
The statue of Khayyam in United Nations Office in Vienna as a part of Persian Scholars Pavilion donated by Iran.
A statue of Omar Khayyam in Laleh Park of Tehran. Made by Abolhassan Sadighi.
Statue of Omar Khayyam in Bucharest
Mausoleum of Omar Khayyam in Nishapur, Iran. Some of his rubáiyáts are used as calligraphic (taliq script) decoration on the exterior body of his mausoleum.
Statue of Omar Khayyam in his birthplace and home town, Nishapur.
Monument to Omar Khayyam in Ciudad Universitaria of Madrid

Khayyam facts for kids

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