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:
Named after Lord Kelvin, the mathematician who discovered them in the late 19th century, these waves don’t roll and crash along the shore like a tsunami or hurricane.
From Salon ● Oct. 22, 2026
Paul Erdős, the great Hungarian mathematician, left hundreds of problems unsolved when he died.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 24, 2026
“The seven problems,” Fields Medal-winning mathematician Alain Connes said in 2000, “are totally inaccessible to computers.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 12, 2026
Tristan Buckmaster, a mathematics professor at New York University, said on Tuesday, external that he and Levent Alpöge, a mathematician working for OpenAI rival Anthropic, had also been working toward solutions for the problem.
From BBC ● Sep. 8, 2026
Pascal’s father, Étienne, was an accomplished scientist and mathematician; the young Blaise was a genius equal to his father.
From "Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea" by Charles Seife
Experts on Lindell’s side believe decades of work by mathematicians suggest such a possibility is vanishingly small.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 6, 2026
In densely connected networks, some conventional approaches require what mathematicians call cubic time.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 30, 2026
Tell that to a generation of mathematicians and computer engineers, who may find themselves threatened.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 26, 2026
These are much harder questions than counting unicorns and Janet’s egg sales—and mathematicians didn’t think they would have to answer them first.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 24, 2026
The ancients didn’t have the equipment to deal with the infinite, but modern mathematicians have learned to handle it.
From "Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea" by Charles Seife
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Get a wordDefinitions 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.
