Omar Khayyam calculated the length of the solar year to the sixth decimal point, built the foundations of modern algebra, and is remembered worldwide mainly for rebellious quatrains about wine that he may never have written. This deep dive explores the life of a prodigy from Nishapur who lived from 1048 to 1131, navigated the politics of the Seljuk Empire, and was seated beside a ruler on the throne while still in his twenties.

We look at the Isfahan observatory commissioned by Sultan Malik Shah and Nizam al-Mulk, the naked-eye methods behind the Jalali calendar and its 33-year leap cycle that outperforms the Gregorian calendar, and Khayyam’s geometric solutions to cubic equations that anticipated analytic geometry. Then we follow the 1092 assassinations that ended his patronage, his pilgrimage to Mecca to deflect heresy charges, his reluctant years as a court astrologer, and the three competing interpretations of the Rubaiyat that Edward FitzGerald made a global sensation in 1859.

• Why medieval rulers treated brilliant scholars as crown jewels of imperial prestige
• How giant masonry quadrants produced a solar year measurement accurate without telescopes
• The Khayyam-Saccheri quadrilateral and the door it opened to non-Euclidean geometry
• Secular atheist, Sufi mystic, or victim of false attribution: the three readings of the poetry
• His legacy from an Agatha Christie title to speeches by Martin Luther King Jr.