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

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

Delangue was already working in product and marketing for startups in New York when he and Chaumond—a mathematician who had worked for startups and the French government—teamed up.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 4, 2026

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

From MarketWatch ● Aug. 15, 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

Even though I wasn’t exactly sure yet what a research mathematician was, I loved math and wanted to become one.

From "Reaching for the Moon" by Katherine Johnson

Whether it’s really over was the agenda when OpenAI hosted mathematicians in its San Francisco offices last month.

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

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

What this means for the future of mathematics – and human mathematicians – remains to be seen.

From Science Daily ● Aug. 6, 2026

As mathematicians were uncovering the connection between zero and infinity, physicists began to encounter zeros in the natural world; zero crossed over from mathematics to physics.

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