Omar Khayyam gets Google Doodle for 971st birthday, who was he?

New Delhi: Google on Saturday dedicated a creative and special doodle to Persian mathematician Omar Khayyam on his 971st birthday. He was best known for his work on the classification and solution of cubic equations.

Apart from his maths skills, he was also a well-known astronomer and poet. Born in Nishapur, now in northeastern Iran, Khayyam spent most of his life near the court of the Karakhanid and Seljuq rulers.

His work on the classification and solution of cubic equations is phenomenal of those times as he had provided geometric solutions by the intersection of cones. Khayyam was first to give a general method for solving cubic equations. Although he didn't consider negative roots, his methods were sufficient to find geometrically all real (positive or negative) roots of cubic equations.

It was his poems however, known as Rubaiyat, that made him globally famous post-humously. A translation by Edward Fitzgerald became popular in Western countries after Khayyam's death - over 600 years later. 

Khayyam's Jalali calendar is another huge contribution by the scholar - a 33-year near precise solar calendar that was in use in erstwhile Persia for a long time, and still forms the basis for other calendars in use in the region.

In 2012, Khayyam's 964th birthday was also celebrated by the search engine with a special doodle which was very well received by users.

Apart from India, the doodle will also appear to Google users in Russia, the Middle East, North African nations, the US and Chile.