Google celebrates 971st birth anniversary of Persian mathematician

Omar Khayam or Abu'l Fath Omar ibn Ibrahim al-Khayyam, the famous Persian mathematician, astronomer and poet's 971st birthday is being celebrated by Google today.

Omar Khayyam was born in Nishapur in northeastern Iran into a family of tent-makers. But his talents were recognized early, and he was sent to study under an Imam who tutored children of the highest nobility. He entered the service of Sultan Malik-Shah at the age of 26.

Omar Khayyam is most know for his Jalali calendar. Jalali is a solar calendar with quite accurate 33-year intercalation cycle. This calendar is now the basis for several other calendars.

Khayyam is also famous as a mathematician because of his study on classification and solution of cubic equations. He is the one who gave the world the solutions to these geometric problems by the intersection of conics.

In simpler terms, he was the one who gave us a general idea of the ways a cubic equation could be solved.

He was the one who discovered about Pascal's triangle and triangular array of binomial coefficients

In 1077, he published a book on non-euclidean geometry 'Sharh ma ashkala min musadarat kitab Uqlidis' meaning 'Explanations of the Difficulties in the Postulates of Euclid'. This was later translated in English 'On the Difficulties of Euclid's Definitions'.

He also wrote 'Problems of Arithmetic', a book on music and algebra.

He was also as great a poet as he was a mathematician. His verse, "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," is very famous.

May 18, 2019, marks his 971st birthday. The astronomer died on December 4, 1131, he was buried in the Khayyam Garden.

This is the second time he has been honoured by a Google Doodle. Google also celebrated his birth anniversary with a doodle in 2012.