Lets Make The New Year Resolution About Khayyam

The Iranian New Year resolution, "Nowruz" is a reminisce of so many good memories, joyful family moments and amazing traditions, for us as Iranians and all those who celebrate Nowruz around the world. For those who do not celebrate the holiday, Nowruz might be just the time to learn about "Omar Khayam", the Iranian multidisciplinary scientist who developed the Solar Hijri (Jalali) calendar. One of the most, if not "the" most, accurate calendar system in the world. To give you a yardstick, compare the error rate of one day in every 110,000 years for the Jalali Calendar to the error rate of the Gregorian calendar, which even in its modern form, deviates from the solar year by 1 day in each 3236 years.

A 26-year-old mathematician, astronomer, and poet, Omar Khayyam was commissioned by the Sultan of his time to build an observatory in the capitol city of Isfahan and to reform the Persian calendar. Privileged by his strong collaborations with other scientists of his time, Khayyam quickly managed to gather a committee of 8 fellow seniors, who managed to propose the new set-point for the New Year (Nowruz) resolution, through interactive, day-to-night astronomical observations and scientific discourse. The Jalali Calendar remains to be the only true solar calendar, owing its precision to the New Year’s resolving moment being tied to the "vernal equinox". The evidence-based nature of calculations for the vernal equinox and the precise 33-intercalation scheme, made the "Jalali calendar reform" a lasting example of how multidisciplinary collaborations can yield to effective and durable results. 

The Jalali calendar is not the only scientific legacy of Khayyam. He and his team later developed complex mathematical equations to determine the distribution of leap years, and perhaps many other "unpublished" projects. One thing to remember about him is that despite his busy schedule running his multidisciplinary team of fellow scientists, he still managed to make time for poetry, giving rise to the "Rubaiyat" collections published shortly after his death.

So let me wish you not only a year of prosperity and joy, but a New Year full of scientific partnerships and valuable output.

Nima Rezaei

Founding President of USERN 

March 21^st 2019, Nowruz 1398