Omar Khayyam

I grew up loving The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam--at least, FitzGerald's translation and selection of Khayyam's 1000+ quatrains.  (I now understand that it reflects as much Victorian sensibilities as the original material.)  What I did not know that is Omar Khayyam was a mathematician as well as a poet, and did original work on solving both quadratic and cubic equations.