mathematician
Americannoun
-
mathematicians
plural
noun
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of mathematician
First recorded in 1400–50, mathematician is from the late Middle English word mathematicion. See mathematics, -ian
Explanation
Use the noun mathematician when you talk about someone who is highly educated in — and good at — math. Your math teacher might be a great mathematician who's also gifted at explaining math to students. You can call a person who does math for a living a mathematician, like a math professor or someone who works in statistics or as an actuary. Actually, anyone who has great skill at mathematics is also a mathematician, even if they work as a chef or a taxi driver. The word mathematician is rooted in the Greek mathematikos, which means "relating to mathematics, or scientific," or simply "disposed to learn."
Vocabulary lists containing mathematician
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
In 2010, a reclusive Russian mathematician Grigori Perelman was honored for proving the Poincaré conjecture, the first Millennium Prize Problem to be solved.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 8, 2026
The claim arrived hours after Tristan Buckmaster, a mathematician at New York University, and Levent Alpoge, who works at OpenAI competitor Anthropic, released their own AI-assisted work on three related equations.
From Barron's ● Sep. 8, 2026
The Hindenburg Omen was developed by Jim Miekka, a mathematician and market analyst, back in 1995.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 15, 2026
The two-dimensional version of the Jacobian conjecture was stated by Czech mathematician Ludwig Kraus in 1884.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 6, 2026
A Styrian nobleman called Baron Hoffman, who was impressed by Kepler’s work and liked the mathematician, was also a Counsellor of the Emperor, Rudolph II, and had met Tycho.
From "The Scientists" by John Gribbin
The wicked Navier-Stokes problem had vexed mathematicians for nearly a century.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 12, 2026
Their goal was selecting the right problems to work on, like the mathematicians who chose the Millennium Prize Problems.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 12, 2026
OpenAI said Tuesday that one of its unreleased artificial intelligence models had solved a mathematical puzzle that has eluded mathematicians for generations, in a claim which also drew a fight with rival researchers over credit.
From Barron's ● Sep. 8, 2026
During its long history, the Jacobian conjecture has been the subject of many claimed proofs, including by Beniamino Segre and Wolfgang Gröbner, two famed 20th-century mathematicians.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 6, 2026
Copernicus, Digges and Benedetti called themselves mathematicians; Bruno and Gilbert called themselves philosophers.
From "The Invention of Science" by David Wootton
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
