Google Doodle Celebrates Omar Khayyam,  The Prolific Mathematician, Poet, Philosopher And Astronomer From Persia In India, Russia, the Middle East, North African nations, the US and Chile.

New Delhi, India, Saturday, May 18, 2019–

Born on May 18, 1048, in northeastern Iran’s Nishapur, Omar Khayyam is notable for several mathematical and scientific discoveries.  He spent most of his life near the court of the Karakhanid and Seljuq rulers in the period which witnessed the First Crusade.

He was the first to create a general method for solving cubic equations, where he provided geometric solutions by the intersection of conics.

The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám

Omar Khayyam was famous for his poetry and verses. He wrote more than a thousand ‘Rubaiyat’ or verses. ‘Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám’, a section of work translated by Edward Fitzgerald, became popular in the West centuries after his death. His poems made him extremely famous, unfortunately posthumously.

Omar was famous during his lifetime not as a poet but as an astronomer and mathematician. The earliest reference to his having written poetry is found in his biography by al-Isfahani, written 43 years after his death. This view is reinforced by other medieval historians such as Shahrazuri (1201) and Al-Qifti (1255). Parts of the Rubaiyat appear as incidental quotations from Omar in early works of biography and in anthologies. These include works of Razi (ca. 1160–1210), Daya (1230), Juvayni (ca. 1226–1283), and Jajarmi (1340). Also, five quatrains assigned to Khayyam in somewhat later sources appear in Zahiri Samarqandi’s Sindbad-Nameh (before 1160) without attribution.

Some Verses From The Works Of Omar Khayyam:

“Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life.” 

“The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.”

“To wisely live your life, you don’t need to know much
Just remember two main rules for the beginning:
You better starve, than eat whatever
And better be alone, than with whoever.” 

“It’s too bad if a heart lacks fire,
and is deprived of the light 
of a heart ablaze.
The day on which you are
without passionate love
is the most wasted day of your life.” 

The Jalali Calendar – Solar Calendar With 33 Year Intercalation

A major contribution of Khayyam is the Jalali calendar. The Jalali calendar is a solar calendar that was used in Persia, variants of which today are still in use in Iran and Afghanistan. It was adopted on 15 March 1079 by the Seljuk Sultan Jalal al-Din Malik Shah I (for whom it was named), based on the recommendations of a committee of astronomers, including Omar Khayyam, at the imperial observatory in his capital city of Isfahan. Month computations were based on solar transits through the zodiac. It remained in use for eight centuries. It arose out of dissatisfaction with the seasonal drift in the Islamic calendar which is due to that calendar being lunar instead of solar; a lunar year of 354 days, while acceptable to a desert nomad people, proved to be unworkable for settled, agricultural peoples, and the Iranian calendar is one of several non-lunar calendars adopted by settled Muslims for agricultural purposes (others include the Coptic calendar, the Julian calendar, and the Semitic calendars of the Near East). Sultan Jalal commissioned the task in 1073. Its work was completed well before the Sultan’s death in 1092, after which the observatory would be abandoned.

Major Contributions To Algebra

One of the most renowned scholars of his time, Khayyan worked as an advisor and court astrologer to Malik Shah I in Khorasan province.

Khayyam also made major contributions in algebra. He has penned down ‘Treatise on Demonstration of Problems of Algebra’. He also discovered Pascal’s triangle and a triangular array of binomial coefficients. He also wrote ‘Problems of Arithmetic’, a book on music and algebra.

(With Inputs From Wikipedia)