Omar Khayyam was born on May 18, 1048, in the city of Nishapur in Persia, which is now Iran. He grew up to become one of the most brilliant minds of the medieval world. As a mathematician, he solved cubic equations -- problems so difficult that European mathematicians would not crack them for another five hundred years. As an astronomer, he helped create the Jalali calendar, which measured the length of a year with remarkable accuracy. But Khayyam is best remembered today for his poetry. He wrote hundreds of short poems called quatrains, each exactly four lines long. His most famous collection is called the Rubaiyat. In his poems, Khayyam wrote about the beauty of nature, the passing of time, and the importance of living fully in the present moment. One of his most quoted lines encourages readers to enjoy today rather than worry about tomorrow. For centuries, the Rubaiyat was known mainly in the Persian-speaking world. Then in 1859, an English poet named Edward FitzGerald translated the poems into English. FitzGerald's version became wildly popular in Britain and America. Some scholars argue that FitzGerald changed the poems too much, adding his own ideas. But his translation introduced Khayyam to millions of new readers. Today Omar Khayyam is celebrated as proof that science and art are not opposites -- they are two ways of understanding the same world.