Omar Khayyam

Omar Khayyam reformed the Persian calendar to a precision Europe would not match for centuries and gave geometric solutions to cubic equations that anticipated later algebra. He is remembered just as much for the quatrains gathered as the Rubaiyat, where the same mind turns from certainty to wine, mortality, and the silence of the heavens. Be gentle with the moment, the poems say, for it will not return, and the wise grave and the foolish one look alike in the end. Faith and skepticism sit together in him without resolving, which is part of why he still speaks.