MATHEMATICIANS from Iran

Top 10

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the top 10 most legendary Iranian Mathematicians of all time. This list of famous Iranian Mathematicians is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity. Visit the rankings page to view the entire list of Iranian Mathematicians.

1. Omar Khayyam (1048 - 1131)

With an HPI of 83.59, Omar Khayyam is the most famous Iranian Mathematician.  His biography has been translated into 112 different languages on wikipedia.

Ghiyāth al-Dīn Abū al-Fatḥ ʿUmar ibn Ibrāhīm Nīsābūrī (18 May 1048 – 4 December 1131), commonly known as Omar Khayyam (Persian: عمر خیّام), was a Persian polymath, known for his contributions to mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, and poetry.: 94  He was born in Nishapur, the initial capital of the Seljuk Empire. He lived during the rule of the Seljuk dynasty, around the time of the First Crusade. As a mathematician, he is most notable for his work on the classification and solution of cubic equations, where he provided geometric solutions by the intersection of conics. Khayyam also contributed to the understanding of the parallel axiom.: 284  As an astronomer, he calculated the duration of the solar year with remarkable precision and accuracy, and designed the Jalali calendar, a solar calendar with a very precise 33-year intercalation cycle: 659  which provided the basis for the Persian calendar that is still in use after nearly a millennium. There is a tradition of attributing poetry to Omar Khayyam, written in the form of quatrains (rubāʿiyāt رباعیات). This poetry became widely known to the English-reading world in a translation by Edward FitzGerald (Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, 1859), which enjoyed great success in the Orientalism of the fin de siècle.

2. Abu al-Wafa' Buzjani (940 - 998)

With an HPI of 68.69, Abu al-Wafa' Buzjani is the 2nd most famous Iranian Mathematician.  His biography has been translated into 44 different languages.

Abū al-Wafāʾ Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn Yaḥyā ibn Ismāʿīl ibn al-ʿAbbās al-Būzjānī or Abū al-Wafā Būzhjānī (Persian: ابو الوفا بوژگانی, Arabic: ابو الوفا بوزجانی; 10 June 940 – 15 July 998) was a Persian mathematician and astronomer who worked in Baghdad. He made important innovations in spherical trigonometry, and his work on arithmetic for businessmen contains the first instance of using negative numbers in a medieval Islamic text. He is also credited with compiling the tables of sines and tangents at 15' intervals. He also introduced the secant and cosecant functions, as well studied the interrelations between the six trigonometric lines associated with an arc. His Almagest was widely read by medieval Arabic astronomers in the centuries after his death. He is known to have written several other books that have not survived.

3. Al-Karaji (953 - 1029)

With an HPI of 59.58, Al-Karaji is the 3rd most famous Iranian Mathematician.  His biography has been translated into 22 different languages.

Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn al Ḥasan al-Karajī (Persian: ابو بکر محمد بن الحسن الکرجی; c. 953 – c. 1029) was a 10th-century Persian mathematician and engineer who flourished at Baghdad. He was born in Karaj, a city near Tehran. His three principal surviving works are mathematical: Al-Badi' fi'l-hisab (Wonderful on calculation), Al-Fakhri fi'l-jabr wa'l-muqabala (Glorious on algebra), and Al-Kafi fi'l-hisab (Sufficient on calculation).

4. Abu Nasr Mansur (960 - 1036)

With an HPI of 59.17, Abu Nasr Mansur is the 4th most famous Iranian Mathematician.  His biography has been translated into 21 different languages.

Abu Nasri Mansur ibn Ali ibn Iraq al-Jaʿdī (Persian: أبو نصر منصور بن علی بن عراق; c. 960 – 1036) was a Persian Muslim mathematician and astronomer. He is well known for his work with the spherical sine law. Abu Nasr Mansur was born in Gilan, Persia, to the ruling family of Khwarezm, the Afrighids. He was thus a prince within the political sphere. He was a student of Abu'l-Wafa and a teacher of and also an important colleague of the mathematician, Al-Biruni. Together, they were responsible for great discoveries in mathematics and dedicated many works to one another. Most of Abu Nasri's work focused on math, but some of his writings were on astronomy. In mathematics, he had many important writings on trigonometry, which were developed from the writings of Ptolemy. He also preserved the writings of Menelaus of Alexandria and reworked many of the Greeks theorems. He died in the Ghaznavid Empire (modern-day Afghanistan) near the city of Ghazna.

5. Qutb al-Din al-Shirazi (1236 - 1311)

With an HPI of 58.34, Qutb al-Din al-Shirazi is the 5th most famous Iranian Mathematician.  His biography has been translated into 25 different languages.

Qotb al-Din Mahmoud b. Zia al-Din Mas'ud b. Mosleh Shirazi (Persian: قطب‌الدینْ محمود بن ضیاءالدینْ مسعود بن مصلح شیرازی; 1236–1311) was a 13th-century Persian polymath and poet who made contributions to astronomy, mathematics, medicine, physics, music theory, philosophy and Sufism.

6. Al-Khazini (1077 - 1155)

With an HPI of 57.91, Al-Khazini is the 6th most famous Iranian Mathematician.  Her biography has been translated into 22 different languages.

Abū al-Fath Abd al-Rahman Mansūr al-Khāzini or simply al-Khāzini (أبوالفتح عبدالرحمن منصور الخازنی (Persian), flourished 1115–1130) was an Iranian astronomer, during the Seljuk Empire. His astronomical tables written under the patronage of Sultan Sanjar (Zīj al-Sanjarī, 1115) is considered to be one of the major works in mathematical astronomy of the medieval period.: 107  He provided the positions of fixed stars, and for oblique ascensions and time-equations for the latitude of Marv in which he was based.: 197  He also wrote extensively on various calendrical systems and on the various manipulations of the calendars. He was the author of an encyclopedia on scales and water-balances.

7. Sharaf al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī (1135 - 1213)

With an HPI of 54.04, Sharaf al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī is the 7th most famous Iranian Mathematician.  His biography has been translated into 18 different languages.

Sharaf al-Dīn al-Muẓaffar ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Muẓaffar al-Ṭūsī (Persian: شرف‌الدین مظفر بن محمد بن مظفر توسی; c. 1135 Tus, Iran – c. 1213 Iran) known more often as Sharaf al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī or Sharaf ad-Dīn aṭ-Ṭūsī, was an Iranian mathematician and astronomer of the Islamic Golden Age (during the Middle Ages).

8. Maryam Mirzakhani (1977 - 2017)

With an HPI of 51.59, Maryam Mirzakhani is the 8th most famous Iranian Mathematician.  Her biography has been translated into 78 different languages.

Maryam Mirzakhani (Persian: مریم میرزاخانی, pronounced [mæɾˈjæm miːɾzɑːxɑːˈniː]; 12 May 1977 – 14 July 2017) was an Iranian mathematician and a professor of mathematics at Stanford University. Her research topics included Teichmüller theory, hyperbolic geometry, ergodic theory, and symplectic geometry. On 13 August 2014, Mirzakhani was honored with the Fields Medal, the most prestigious award in mathematics, becoming the first woman to win the prize, as well as the first Iranian. The award committee cited her work in "the dynamics and geometry of Riemann surfaces and their moduli spaces". On 14 July 2017, Mirzakhani died of breast cancer at the age of 40.

9. Al-Nayrizi (865 - 922)

With an HPI of 48.57, Al-Nayrizi is the 9th most famous Iranian Mathematician.  His biography has been translated into 15 different languages.

Abū’l-‘Abbās al-Faḍl ibn Ḥātim al-Nairīzī (Arabic: أبو العباس الفضل بن حاتم النيريزي; Persian: ابوالعباس فضل بن حاتم نیریزی; Latin: Anaritius, Nazirius, c. 865 – c. 922) was a Persian mathematician and astronomer from Nayriz, now in Fars Province, Iran.

10. Caucher Birkar (1978 - )

With an HPI of 41.67, Caucher Birkar is the 10th most famous Iranian Mathematician.  His biography has been translated into 24 different languages.

Caucher Birkar (Kurdish: کۆچەر بیرکار, romanized: Koçer Bîrkar, lit. 'migrant mathematician'; born Fereydoun Derakhshani (Persian: فریدون درخشانی); July 1978) is an Iranian Kurdish mathematician and a professor at Tsinghua University and at the University of Cambridge. Birkar is an important contributor to modern birational geometry. In 2010 he received the Leverhulme Prize in mathematics and statistics for his contributions to algebraic geometry, and in 2016, shared the AMS Moore Prize for the article "Existence of minimal models for varieties of log general type". He was awarded the Fields Medal in 2018, "for his proof of boundedness of Fano varieties and contributions to the minimal model program". In his office at the University, Birkar has two photographs of Alexander Grothendieck, his favorite mathematician, who like Birkar, was a refugee and Fields medalist.