Omar Khayam

Ghiyath al-Din Abu l-Fath Omar ibn Ibrahim Khayyam Nishapuri (in Persian: غیاث الدین ابو الفتح عمر بن ابراهیم خیام نیشان‎) or Omar Khayam, (in Fundéu “Omar Khayam”),(Nishapur, then the Seljuk capital of Khorasan —now Iran—, c. May 18, 1048 — ibid., c. December 4, 1131) was a Persian mathematician, astronomer, and poet. His name is also usually found written according to the English transcription, Omar Khayyam (because in English there is no sound of & # 34; j & # 34; Spanish that does exist in Persian). Likewise, the Arabic version, Omar al-Khayyam or Omar ibn al-Khayyam, may appear. The literal translation of his last name is & # 34; maker of tents & # 34; (related to the Spanish word of Arabic origin & # 34; jaima & # 34;) profession of which there is supposed to be a tradition in his family.

Biography

Jayam was born on May 18, 1048 in Nishapur, where he also died, in 1131. There and in the city of Balkh he received a solid education in science and philosophy. In 1070 he moved to Samarkand, where the patronage of the jurist Abu Taher enabled him to complete his Thesis on Proofs of Algebra and Comparison. With it he achieved great recognition and prestige, to the point of being called by Sultan Malik Shah I, who commissioned him to build an astronomical observatory in Marv (now Mary, in Turkmenistan), according to Nizam al-Mulk's book Siasat Namé, in collaboration with seven other astronomers and mathematicians, including Abdolrahman Jazení and Meimún-ebne Nayib Vasetí.

Legend has it that in his youth he became friends with the religious reformer Hasan-i Sabbah and the politician Nizam al-Mulk.

Omar Khayam carried out relevant research in astronomy, mainly the correction of the ancient Zoroastrian calendar. Since then a new era has been adopted, known as jalalí or the Seliuk.In 1092 he made his pilgrimage to Mecca, according to Muslim custom. On his return to Nishapur he worked as a historian and teacher of mathematics, astronomy, medicine and philosophy, among other disciplines.

In 1094, after the death of his father, he wrote a literary work in his mother tongue, Persian (also known as Dari or Tajik, spoken in Iran, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Georgia, part of India and part of Pakistan). His poems stand out for the delicacy and subtlety of their language. As a philosopher, Omar Khayam was a materialist, pessimist and skeptic.

Omar Khayam's most notable poetic work is the Rubaiyat, a compilation of up to a thousand quatrains that talk about nature and the human being. Rubaiyat is the plural of ruba'i, which means precisely quatrain.

Reading the Rubaiyat means an approach to oriental literature. It contains a deep human sense that sings the delights of love and the joys of life, which, with the transpositions of bitterness and optimism, make up the character of the individual accentuated in their reality. Life requires hard sacrifices from man because he is a slave to his own prejudices. Among so many absurdities, he does not enjoy his ephemeral existence. Jayam wants to convince man that he is wrong and invites him to get rid of dogmas and doctrines, in order to take advantage of the tangible values of nature.

Contributions to mathematics and science

Omar Jayam Observatory

Monument to Omar Jayam in Bucharest, Romania.

Registration of a poem by Omar Jayam in Morića Han in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina.

For 18 years, Omar Khayam carried out relevant research in astronomy, which included the compilation of astronomical tables and particularly, the correction of the ancient Zoroastrian calendar, which the Persians had preserved after the Islamization of Persia due to its accuracy, despite Islam uses the lunar calendar. The investigations carried out allowed him to calculate the error of the Persian calendar, which had a year of 365 exact days. For the new calendar, which was named Jalalí by order of Malik Shah I (who was also called Jalaledin), Khayam calculated the length of the year with stunning accuracy. Its error is one day in 3,770 years, even less than that of the Gregorian calendar (one day in 3,330 years), which began to be used in Europe on October 15, 1582. The Yalalí calendar was introduced on March 15, 1079, and is the calendar still used today in Iran and Afghanistan. Omar Khayam was unable to finish the astronomical tables because of the deaths, in the same year (1092), of Nizam al-Mulk and Sultan Malik Shah.

Following one of the precepts of Islam, he made a pilgrimage to Mecca in 1092. Upon his return to Nishapur he remained linked to the court, where he served as historian and judge, and taught mathematics, astronomy, history, medicine or philosophy. Unfortunately, we only know part of his scientific work, which is extraordinary: the Dissertation on a possible demonstration of the parallel postulate, of non-Euclidean geometry, the Thesis on demonstrations of algebra and comparison, written in Arabic (translated by Woepecke in 1851); the Treatise on the accuracy of the Indian system for calculating roots of equations, referring to equations of the second and third degree; Problems in Arithmetic and Calculation, Description of Malik Shah's Astronomical Tables, essay Light of Reason, on science in general, and the Dissertation on natural sciences. There are about eight other works, on physics, economics, history, philosophy, metaphysics, and traditions.

In his Thesis on demonstrations of algebra and comparison he develops the first procedure for solving the quadratic and cubic equations from the conic sections, which allows them to find a positive root and also manages to demonstrate that they have at least one second root. His assertion that the roots of quadratic equations cannot be found by straightedge and compass could not be proven until 750 years later. And the theory of quadratic equations was not developed until the 17th century, by René Descartes.

He was also the first to describe the development of the power of a binomial with a natural exponent and to establish the idea that fractions could constitute a numerical field with broader properties than the field of natural numbers, the only ones known at that time., which dated back to the Greeks. These theoretical concepts were among the leading mathematics during the European Renaissance. Nizam al-Mulk's chronicle highlights Khayam as an unsurpassed astronomer. But his contributions to mathematics, which were not then fully understood in all his significance, far outweigh his important achievements in astronomy.

Despite the difficulties of the time in which he lived, he wrote numerous works, including Arithmetic Problems, which is a music book and an algebra book, both before turn 25 years old.

In 1070 he wrote his famous work on algebra A Treatise on Proofs of Algebra Problems, which contains a complete classification of cubic equations solved geometrically by intersecting conic sections. And it is that he tried to classify quadratic equations successfully, although he could not find the solution for all cubic equations, despite being sure that it was possible to do so, since in some cases he found geometric solutions.

Malik Shah, grandson of the founder of the Seljuk dynasty, called Omar Khayam to come to Isfahan to set up an observatory, which Khayam directed for eighteen years, making it an exceptional research center. It produced astronomical tables and contributed to the reform of the calendar, since the investigations carried out allowed him to calculate the error of the Persian calendar, which had 365 exact days (it must be considered that, at the end of the 19th century, the year lasted 365.242196 days and is currently 365.242190). That calendar is still in effect today in Iran and Afghanistan.

The death of Malik Shah in 1092 leads to the disappearance of the financing of the observatory, so the calendar reform is abandoned and Omar Khayam is unable to finish his astronomical tables. In addition, the end of the period of peace after the death of Malik Shah, meant that Omar Khayam began to suffer attacks from orthodox Muslims.

It is to Omar Khayam that the unknown in the equations is called x. He called her shay (Arabic for "thing" or "something"). The term passed into Spanish as xay, since the "x" it had this sound ("sh") in old Spanish and from there it derived into only the initial x.

Literature

Great scholarship is required to cover a field of knowledge as vast as that encompassed by Omar Khayam and to achieve the wisdom that he transmits to us, also in his poetry, which has required centuries to begin to be duly valued, by developing the humanity a culture more adjusted to the natural universe and less limited by the beliefs on which it should have supported its evolution process. Scientists, particularly astronomers, have recognized his enormous talent, and a major crater on the Moon was named after him. Omar Jayam crater is located at the following lunar coordinates: latitude 58.0 N and longitude 102.1 west.

Manuscript of the Rubaiyat, Morris and Burne-Jones.

Table At Omar Jayyam's grave (before 1911), Jay Hambidge.

Monument to Omar Jayam in the University City of Madrid.

Rubaiyat (Ruba`iyyat)

He is known primarily for his poetry, a corpus called Rubaiyat (Persian: رباعیات rubāʿiyāt‎ or "quartets"), series of four verses (ruba'i) written in Persian. There are discrepancies about the verses that make up the Rubaiyat, since these have been largely reconstructed from several different copies, and it is possible that in some compilation there are verses not due to the poet's hand. In the Rubaiyat he conveys his ideas about topics as diverse as science and knowledge, morality and personal behavior, religion and theology, how to be happy, nostalgia for what has been lived, the enjoyment of life before death, where we come from and where we are going. In the West they only began to be known from 1859, through the very free and widespread translation into English by Edward FitzGerald, which was followed by many others into other European languages.

The Rubaiyyat were expurgated and fixed by the Iranian writer Sadeq Hedayat (1903-1951), who tells us about Khayam from two perspectives: as a philosopher and as a poet. Of the first he tells us that he was a materialistic, pessimistic and skeptical philosopher. According to Jayam, blind and deaf nature continues the cycle: the sky is empty and does not listen to anyone's cries. The thought of him is drenched in sadness, sorrow, nonexistence and death.

For Jayam, nothing exists beyond matter, the world is made from the union of particles that work by mere chance. He perceives nature with a special delicacy and subtlety, accentuated by the beauty of his language.

Legacy and recognition

In astronomy

• The lunar crater Omar Khayyam has been named in his memory since 1970.
• A smaller asteroid or planet, discovered by the Soviet astronoma Lyudmila Zhuravlyova in 1980, was named (3095) Omarkhayyam.

In literature

• Omar Jayam is one of the main characters of the Samarkand novel by the Lebanese French-speaking writer Amin Maalouf.
• A character in the novel Shame (Shame, 1983), Salman Rushdie, is called Omar Jayam.
• Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges refers to Omar Jayam and his poetry on multiple occasions throughout his work. See the Chess sonnet. Omar Jayam is also a rehearsal character The riddle of Edward Fitzgerald.
• In the novel The Portrait of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, Lord Henry refers to Omar Jayam as the "king of Hedonism."
• In the work Platero and I, by Juan Ramón Jiménez, his name appears when the protagonist reads a text of his.
• The writer Christopher Hitchens identifies Omar Jayam as a skeptic, whose poetry often satirizes the practices of religion.
• Omar Jayam is quoted in the book "The Man Who Calculated", by the professor of mathematics and Brazilian writer Julio César de Mello and Souza, better known as Malba Tahan.
• Omar Jayam is also quoted several times in the book "EARTH/inferno" published in 1905 by the wizard Austin Osman Spare.
• Omar Keyyham is the title of a poem by León de Greiff in honor of the astronomer. It is in volume I of the poetic work of De greiff, page 193. The poem is 1914.
• At the beginning of the novel The Tears of Shiva appears a quote from Omar Jayam that says: "They say that every new morning brings us a thousand roses; yes but where are the petals of yesterday's rose?"
• Pere Calders, in his book "Cròniques de la veritat hide" refers to Omar Jayam. Specifically, it is quoted by a philosopher character to give a life lesson in the story "The Principi of the Saviesa".

On TV

• Part of a fragment of his work was used in the promotional campaign of the sixth season of the series Lostin Spain.

In music

• The British composer Sir Granville Bantock (1868-1946) composed an oratory bearing his name, "Omar Khayyám". It is a long lasting piece (more than three hours) for three main voices, choir and a great orchestra, so it is difficult to see it represented in traditional programming. Contemporary in its premiere "The Kingdom"Sir Edward Elgar didn't succeed. It is a work influenced by the German composers of the late nineteenth century, especially Johannes Brahms and Richard Wagner; also by Claude Debussy in the most "exotic" parts. It is well collected on the disc in the version of the BBC Orchestra and Coros, led by Vernon Handley and edited by the Chandos seal in SACD.
• The Old World of Shrimp, from his album The Legend of Time, uses as a lyrics several selected verses of the Rubaiyat. It has subsequently been versioned by other groups such as Derby Motoreta's Burrito Kachimba

In sculpture

• The Basque sculptor Eduardo Chillida (1924-2002) made four sculptures in his homage: "Mesa de Omar Khayyám" between 1982 and 1984.