Wikinventia — Atlas of discoveries and inventions · Middle Age

Geometric solution of cubic equations — Omar Khayyam

~1070 AD · Transmission: Silenced
MathematicsTheoryPersian

Omar Khayyam — known in the West mainly for the Rubāʿīyāt — was above all a first-rate mathematician. He classified the fourteen forms of the cubic equation and showed how to solve each one geometrically through the intersection of two conic sections. His work explicitly establishes a bridge between algebra and geometry that the canonical narrative attributes almost exclusively to 17th-century Europe. It is a major piece of the silenced corpus of medieval Islamic mathematics.

Historical regionPersia (present-day Iran)
Primary sourceRisāla fī l-barāhīn ʿalā masāʾil al-jabr wa-l-muqābala (Treatise on Demonstration of Problems of Algebra) — c. 1070
Secondary sourceÖzdural, A. — Omar Khayyam, Mathematicians, and Conversazioni with Artisans (Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 1995)
Original languageArabic
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