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 mathematics
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examples:
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Niels Henrik Abel
Norwegian mathematician (1802-1829)
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Al-Hasan ibn al-Haytham
an 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)
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Archimedes
Greek mathematician and physicist noted for his work in hydrostatics and mechanics and geometry (287-212 BC)
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Thomas Bayes
English mathematician for whom Bayes' theorem is named (1702-1761)
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Jacques Bernoulli
Swiss mathematician (1654-1705)
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Johann Bernoulli
Swiss mathematician (1667-1748)
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Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel
German mathematician and astronomer who made accurate measurements of stellar distances and who predicted the existence on an 8th planet (1784-1846)
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George Boole
English mathematician; creator of Boolean algebra (1815-1864)
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Nathaniel Bowditch
United States mathematician and astronomer noted for his works on navigation (1773-1838)
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Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas Caritat
French mathematician and philosopher (1743-1794)
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Rene Descartes
French 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)
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Diophantus
Greek mathematician who was the first to try to develop an algebraic notation (3rd century)
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Eratosthenes
Greek mathematician and astronomer who estimated the circumference of the earth and the distances to the Moon and sun (276-194 BC)
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Leonhard Euler
Swiss mathematician (1707-1783)
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Pierre de Fermat
French mathematician who founded number theory; contributed (with Pascal) to the theory of probability (1601-1665)
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Baron Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier
French mathematician who developed Fourier analysis and studied the conduction of heat (1768-1830)
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Evariste Galois
French mathematician who described the conditions for solving polynomial equations; was killed in a duel at the age of 21 (1811-1832)
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Karl Friedrich Gauss
German mathematician who developed the theory of numbers and who applied mathematics to electricity and magnetism and astronomy and geodesy (1777-1855)
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Kurt Godel
United States mathematician (born in Austria) who is remembered principally for demonstrating the limitations of axiomatic systems (1906-1978)
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Sir William Rowan Hamilton
Irish mathematician (1806-1865)
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Hero of Alexandria
Greek mathematician and inventor who devised a way to determine the area of a triangle and who described various mechanical devices (first century)
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David Hilbert
German mathematician (1862-1943)
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Hipparchus
Greek 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)
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Karl Gustav Jacob Jacobi
German mathematician (1804-1851)
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Felix Klein
German mathematician who created the Klein bottle (1849-1925)
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Leopold Kronecker
German mathematician (1823-1891)
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Pierre Simon de Laplace
French mathematician and astronomer who formulated the nebular hypothesis concerning the origins of the solar system and who developed the theory of probability (1749-1827)
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Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz
German 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)
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Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky
Russian mathematician who independently discovered non-Euclidean geometry (1792-1856)
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Benoit Mandelbrot
French mathematician (born in Poland) noted for inventing fractals (born in 1924)
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Andre Markoff
Russian mathematician (1856-1922)
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Hermann Minkowski
German mathematician (born in Russia) who suggested the concept of four-dimensional space-time (1864-1909)
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August Ferdinand Mobius
German mathematician responsible for the Mobius strip (1790-1868)
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Johann Muller
German mathematician and astronomer (1436-1476)
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John Napier
Scottish mathematician who invented logarithms; introduced the use of the decimal point in writing numbers (1550-1617)
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Sir Isaac Newton
English mathematician and physicist; remembered for developing the calculus and for his law of gravitation and his three laws of motion (1642-1727)
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Emmy Noether
German mathematician (1882-1935)
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Omar Khayyam
Persian poet and mathematician and astronomer whose poetry was popularized by Edward Fitzgerald's translation (1050-1123)
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Blaise Pascal
French mathematician and philosopher and Jansenist; invented an adding machine; contributed (with Fermat) to the theory of probability (1623-1662)
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Benjamin Peirce
United States mathematician and astronomer remembered for his studies of Uranus and Saturn and Neptune (1809-1880)
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Pythagoras
Greek philosopher and mathematician who proved the Pythagorean theorem; considered to be the first true mathematician (circa 580-500 BC)
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Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann
pioneer of non-Euclidean geometry (1826-1866)
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Alan Mathison Turing
English mathematician who conceived of the Turing machine and broke German codes during World War II (1912-1954)
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Oswald Veblen
United States mathematician (1880-1960)
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Paul Vernier
French mathematician who described the vernier scale (1580-1637)
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John von Neumann
United States mathematician who contributed to the development of atom bombs and of stored-program digital computers (1903-1957)
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Andre Weil
United States mathematician (born in France) (1906-1998)
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Alfred North Whitehead
English philosopher and mathematician who collaborated with Bertrand Russell (1861-1947)
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Norbert Wiener
United States mathematician and founder of cybernetics (1894-1964)
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Euclid
Greek geometer (3rd century BC)
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types:
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algebraist
a mathematician whose specialty is algebra
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arithmetician
someone who specializes in arithmetic
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geometer, geometrician
a mathematician specializing in geometry
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number theorist
a mathematician specializing in number theory
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probability theorist
a mathematician who specializes in probability theory
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mathematical statistician, statistician
a mathematician who specializes in statistics
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trigonometrician
a mathematician specializing in trigonometry
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type of:
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scientist
a person with advanced knowledge of one or more sciences
Pronunciation
US
/ˈmæθ(ə)məˌtɪʃən/
UK
/mæθməˈtɪʃən/
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