mathematician
Other forms: mathematicians
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."
Definitions of mathematician
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a person skilled in mathematicsexamples:Niels Henrik AbelNorwegian mathematician (1802-1829)Al-Hasan ibn al-Haythaman Egyptian polymath (born in Iraq) whose research in geometry and optics was influential into the 17th century; established experiments as the norm of proof in physics (died in 1040)ArchimedesGreek mathematician and physicist noted for his work in hydrostatics and mechanics and geometry (287-212 BC)Thomas BayesEnglish mathematician for whom Bayes' theorem is named (1702-1761)Jacques BernoulliSwiss mathematician (1654-1705)Johann BernoulliSwiss mathematician (1667-1748)Friedrich Wilhelm BesselGerman mathematician and astronomer who made accurate measurements of stellar distances and who predicted the existence on an 8th planet (1784-1846)George BooleEnglish mathematician; creator of Boolean algebra (1815-1864)Nathaniel BowditchUnited States mathematician and astronomer noted for his works on navigation (1773-1838)Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas CaritatFrench mathematician and philosopher (1743-1794)Rene DescartesFrench philosopher and mathematician; developed dualistic theory of mind and matter; introduced the use of coordinates to locate a point in two or three dimensions (1596-1650)DiophantusGreek mathematician who was the first to try to develop an algebraic notation (3rd century)EratosthenesGreek mathematician and astronomer who estimated the circumference of the earth and the distances to the Moon and sun (276-194 BC)Leonhard EulerSwiss mathematician (1707-1783)Pierre de FermatFrench mathematician who founded number theory; contributed (with Pascal) to the theory of probability (1601-1665)Baron Jean Baptiste Joseph FourierFrench mathematician who developed Fourier analysis and studied the conduction of heat (1768-1830)Evariste GaloisFrench mathematician who described the conditions for solving polynomial equations; was killed in a duel at the age of 21 (1811-1832)Karl Friedrich GaussGerman mathematician who developed the theory of numbers and who applied mathematics to electricity and magnetism and astronomy and geodesy (1777-1855)Kurt GodelUnited States mathematician (born in Austria) who is remembered principally for demonstrating the limitations of axiomatic systems (1906-1978)Sir William Rowan HamiltonIrish mathematician (1806-1865)Hero of AlexandriaGreek mathematician and inventor who devised a way to determine the area of a triangle and who described various mechanical devices (first century)David HilbertGerman mathematician (1862-1943)HipparchusGreek astronomer and mathematician who discovered the precession of the equinoxes and made the first known star chart and is said to have invented trigonometry (second century BC)Karl Gustav Jacob JacobiGerman mathematician (1804-1851)Felix KleinGerman mathematician who created the Klein bottle (1849-1925)Leopold KroneckerGerman mathematician (1823-1891)Pierre Simon de LaplaceFrench mathematician and astronomer who formulated the nebular hypothesis concerning the origins of the solar system and who developed the theory of probability (1749-1827)Gottfried Wilhelm LeibnitzGerman philosopher and mathematician who thought of the universe as consisting of independent monads and who devised a system of the calculus independent of Newton (1646-1716)Nikolai Ivanovich LobachevskyRussian mathematician who independently discovered non-Euclidean geometry (1792-1856)Benoit MandelbrotFrench mathematician (born in Poland) noted for inventing fractals (born in 1924)Andre MarkoffRussian mathematician (1856-1922)Hermann MinkowskiGerman mathematician (born in Russia) who suggested the concept of four-dimensional space-time (1864-1909)August Ferdinand MobiusGerman mathematician responsible for the Mobius strip (1790-1868)Johann MullerGerman mathematician and astronomer (1436-1476)John NapierScottish mathematician who invented logarithms; introduced the use of the decimal point in writing numbers (1550-1617)Sir Isaac NewtonEnglish mathematician and physicist; remembered for developing the calculus and for his law of gravitation and his three laws of motion (1642-1727)Emmy NoetherGerman mathematician (1882-1935)Omar KhayyamPersian poet and mathematician and astronomer whose poetry was popularized by Edward Fitzgerald's translation (1050-1123)Blaise PascalFrench mathematician and philosopher and Jansenist; invented an adding machine; contributed (with Fermat) to the theory of probability (1623-1662)Benjamin PeirceUnited States mathematician and astronomer remembered for his studies of Uranus and Saturn and Neptune (1809-1880)PythagorasGreek philosopher and mathematician who proved the Pythagorean theorem; considered to be the first true mathematician (circa 580-500 BC)Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemannpioneer of non-Euclidean geometry (1826-1866)Alan Mathison TuringEnglish mathematician who conceived of the Turing machine and broke German codes during World War II (1912-1954)Oswald VeblenUnited States mathematician (1880-1960)Paul VernierFrench mathematician who described the vernier scale (1580-1637)John von NeumannUnited States mathematician who contributed to the development of atom bombs and of stored-program digital computers (1903-1957)Andre WeilUnited States mathematician (born in France) (1906-1998)Alfred North WhiteheadEnglish philosopher and mathematician who collaborated with Bertrand Russell (1861-1947)Norbert WienerUnited States mathematician and founder of cybernetics (1894-1964)types:algebraista mathematician whose specialty is algebraarithmeticiansomeone who specializes in arithmeticnumber theorista mathematician specializing in number theoryprobability theorista mathematician who specializes in probability theorytrigonometriciana mathematician specializing in trigonometrytype of:scientista person with advanced knowledge of one or more sciences
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