Omar Khayyam – Persian poet and astronomer
Omar Khayyam was a Persian astronomer, mathematician, and poet.
Omar Khayyam was born in May 1048 in Nishapur, Persia (present-day Iran). His name means “tent maker”, the likely profession of his father. During his lifetime he was known as a mathematician and astronomer. He also studied philosophy.
As a young man he worked in Samarkand under the patronage of the Seljuk ruler, Malik Shah, during which time he wrote the Treatise on Demonstration of Problems of Algebra. In the commentary he is concerned with the foundations of geometry. Khayyam also wrote a commentary on the Principles of Euclid, in which he developed the theory of relations and proportions and the doctrine of parallel. And there Khayyam expressed a number of interesting thoughts that influenced the further development of mathematics.
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