mathematician
Americannoun
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 1900, German mathematician David Hilbert asked what would become known as Hilbert's Sixth Problem, how the behaviour of a whole can be calculated based on the movement of individual particles.
From BBC ● Jul. 24, 2026
The research was led by Professor Ginestra Bianconi, a mathematician at Queen Mary University of London.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 21, 2026
In his classic book “Innumeracy,” mathematician John Allen Paulos observed that people are inclined to think that 1 trillion and 1 billion are about as close together as 1 billion and 1 million.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 1, 2026
And within days, a mathematician at Princeton, Will Sawin, used good old-fashioned human understanding to modify ChatGPT’s construction to get an even better one.
From Slate ● Jun. 22, 2026
He would not have gone if the conference was not focused on the work of his mentor, the black American mathematician David Blackwell.
From "Half of a Yellow Sun" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
The hashtags "Fields Medal" and "First Chinese mathematicians to win Fields Medals" generated millions of views across various social media platforms from Weibo to Rednote.
From BBC ● Jul. 24, 2026
Despite the medium’s many scholars and the mathematicians working hard to calculate box office predictions and forecast trends, film is not an exact science.
From Salon ● Jul. 22, 2026
Rather, it aims to expand the pool of scientists, technical experts, engineers and mathematicians beyond the traditional candidates.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 21, 2026
By building and testing sprinklers with a variety of shapes, a team of mathematicians has now produced a clear experimental answer.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 17, 2026
This is the tangent, and mathematicians realized that it is extremely important in studying motion.
From "Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea" by Charles Seife
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.
