mathematician

American  

[math-uh-muh-tish-uhn] / ˌmæθ ə məˈtɪʃ ən /

noun

• mathematicians
  plural

1. an expert or specialist in mathematics.

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mathematician British  

/ ˌmæθəməˈtɪʃən, ˌmæθmə- /

noun

1. an expert or specialist in mathematics

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Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• nonmathematician
  noun

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• mathematicians
  plural

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."

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

mathematician mathematicians

In those moments, the world’s greatest mathematician offers the models some advice.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 15, 2026

The Hindenburg Omen was developed by Jim Miekka, a mathematician and market analyst, back in 1995.

From MarketWatch ● Aug. 15, 2026

Depicted in the Oscar-winning film "The Imitation Game", Bletchley Park, north of London, was a country house where mathematician Alan Turing cracked the code on encrypted Nazi messages.

From Barron's ● Aug. 5, 2026

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 symbols + and – were only introduced to mathematics in 1540, in a book by the mathematician Robert Recorde, called The Grounde of Artes.

From "The Scientists" by John Gribbin

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

In the proof, a spaghetti-like vortex gets smaller while spinning faster and faster, its speed growing without limit in what mathematicians call “finite-time blowup.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 8, 2026

For decades, mathematicians have tried to prove the Riemann hypothesis, which says that 100% of the nontrivial zeros of the Riemann zeta function fall on a single vertical line.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 15, 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

Even though mathematicians knew that calculus was deeply flawed—thanks to the mathematics of zero and infinity—they quickly embraced the new mathematical tools.

From "Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea" by Charles Seife