Iranian · 1048–1131
Omar Khayyam achieved fame in his lifetime as a mathematician and astronomer, but his rubáiyát—quatrains on wine, mortality, and fate—made him world-famous after Edward FitzGerald's 1859 English translation. He reformed the Persian calendar with remarkable accuracy, solved cubic equations geometrically, and directed the observatory at Isfahan. His poems, scattered and few in Persian sources, became Victorian England's second-most-quoted poetry after the Bible in FitzGerald's free adaptation. Whether the poems attributed to him are genuine, or accumulated around a famous name, remains debated. His skeptical, hedonistic voice challenges orthodox piety: "A jug of wine, a loaf of bread—and thou."