MATHEMATICIAN

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does mathematician mean? 

• MATHEMATICIAN (noun)
  The noun MATHEMATICIAN has 1 sense:

1. a person skilled in mathematics

  Familiarity information: MATHEMATICIAN used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• MATHEMATICIAN (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A person skilled in mathematics

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Hypernyms ("mathematician" is a kind of...):

scientist (a person with advanced knowledge of one or more sciences)

Domain category:

math; mathematics; maths (a science (or group of related sciences) dealing with the logic of quantity and shape and arrangement)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "mathematician"):

arithmetician (someone who specializes in arithmetic)

geometer; geometrician (a mathematician specializing in geometry)

number theorist (a mathematician specializing in number theory)

probability theorist (a mathematician who specializes in probability theory)

mathematical statistician; statistician (a mathematician who specializes in statistics)

trigonometrician (a mathematician specializing in trigonometry)

algebraist (a mathematician whose specialty is algebra)

Instance hyponyms:

Isaac Newton; Newton; 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))

Kronecker; Leopold Kronecker (German mathematician (1823-1891))

John Napier; Napier (Scottish mathematician who invented logarithms; introduced the use of the decimal point in writing numbers (1550-1617))

Johann Muller; Muller; Regiomontanus (German mathematician and astronomer (1436-1476))

August F. Mobius; August Ferdinand Mobius; Mobius (German mathematician responsible for the Mobius strip (1790-1868))

Hermann Minkowski; Minkowski (German mathematician (born in Russia) who suggested the concept of four-dimensional space-time (1864-1909))

Andre Markoff; Andrei Markov; Markoff; Markov (Russian mathematician (1856-1922))

Benoit Mandelbrot; Mandelbrot (French mathematician (born in Poland) noted for inventing fractals (born in 1924))

Lobachevsky; Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky (Russian mathematician who independently discovered non-Euclidean geometry (1792-1856))

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz; Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz; Leibnitz; Leibniz (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))

Laplace; Marquis de Laplace; 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))

Norbert Wiener; Wiener (United States mathematician and founder of cybernetics (1894-1964))

Emmy Noether; Noether (German mathematician (1882-1935))

Omar Khayyam (Persian poet and mathematician and astronomer whose poetry was popularized by Edward Fitzgerald's translation (1050-1123))

Blaise Pascal; Pascal (French mathematician and philosopher and Jansenist; invented an adding machine; contributed (with Fermat) to the theory of probability (1623-1662))

Benjamin Peirce; Peirce (United States mathematician and astronomer remembered for his studies of Uranus and Saturn and Neptune (1809-1880))

Pythagoras (Greek philosopher and mathematician who proved the Pythagorean theorem; considered to be the first true mathematician (circa 580-500 BC))

Bernhard Riemann; Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann; Riemann (pioneer of non-Euclidean geometry (1826-1866))

Alan Mathison Turing; Alan Turing; Turing (English mathematician who conceived of the Turing machine and broke German codes during World War II (1912-1954))

Oswald Veblen; Veblen (United States mathematician (1880-1960))

Paul Vernier; Vernier (French mathematician who described the vernier scale (1580-1637))

John von Neumann; Neumann; von Neumann (United States mathematician who contributed to the development of atom bombs and of stored-program digital computers (1903-1957))

Andre Weil; Weil (United States mathematician (born in France) (1906-1998))

Alfred North Whitehead; Whitehead (English philosopher and mathematician who collaborated with Bertrand Russell (1861-1947))

Eratosthenes (Greek mathematician and astronomer who estimated the circumference of the earth and the distances to the Moon and sun (276-194 BC))

Abel; Niels Abel; Niels Henrik Abel (Norwegian mathematician (1802-1829))

Al-Hasan ibn al-Haytham; al-Haytham; Alhacen; Alhazen; 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))

Archimedes (Greek mathematician and physicist noted for his work in hydrostatics and mechanics and geometry (287-212 BC))

Bayes; Thomas Bayes (English mathematician for whom Bayes' theorem is named (1702-1761))

Bernoulli; Jacques Bernoulli; Jakob Bernoulli; James Bernoulli (Swiss mathematician (1654-1705))

Bernoulli; Jean Bernoulli; Johann Bernoulli; John Bernoulli (Swiss mathematician (1667-1748))

Bessel; 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))

Boole; George Boole (English mathematician; creator of Boolean algebra (1815-1864))

Bowditch; Nathaniel Bowditch (United States mathematician and astronomer noted for his works on navigation (1773-1838))

Condorcet; Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas Caritat; Marquis de Condorcet (French mathematician and philosopher (1743-1794))

Descartes; 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))

Diophantus (Greek mathematician who was the first to try to develop an algebraic notation (3rd century))

Felix Klein; Klein (German mathematician who created the Klein bottle (1849-1925))

Euler; Leonhard Euler (Swiss mathematician (1707-1783))

Fermat; Pierre de Fermat (French mathematician who founded number theory; contributed (with Pascal) to the theory of probability (1601-1665))

Baron Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier; Fourier; Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier (French mathematician who developed Fourier analysis and studied the conduction of heat (1768-1830))

Evariste Galois; Galois (French mathematician who described the conditions for solving polynomial equations; was killed in a duel at the age of 21 (1811-1832))

Gauss; Karl Friedrich Gauss; Karl Gauss (German mathematician who developed the theory of numbers and who applied mathematics to electricity and magnetism and astronomy and geodesy (1777-1855))

Godel; Kurt Godel (United States mathematician (born in Austria) who is remembered principally for demonstrating the limitations of axiomatic systems (1906-1978))

Hamilton; Sir William Rowan Hamilton; William Rowan Hamilton (Irish mathematician (1806-1865))

Hero; Hero of Alexandria; Heron (Greek mathematician and inventor who devised a way to determine the area of a triangle and who described various mechanical devices (first century))

David Hilbert; Hilbert (German mathematician (1862-1943))

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))

Jacobi; Karl Gustav Jacob Jacobi (German mathematician (1804-1851))

Derivation:

mathematics (a science (or group of related sciences) dealing with the logic of quantity and shape and arrangement)

 Context examples 

These people are most excellent mathematicians, and arrived to a great perfection in mechanics, by the countenance and encouragement of the emperor, who is a renowned patron of learning.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

These forms were like the cunning tables used by mathematicians, which may be entered from top, bottom, right, and left, which entrances consist of scores of lines and dozens of columns, and from which may be drawn, without reasoning or thinking, thousands of different conclusions, all unchallengably precise and true.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

Could a linguist, could a grammarian, could even a mathematician have seen what she did, have witnessed their appearance together, and heard their history of it, without feeling that circumstances had been at work to make them peculiarly interesting to each other?

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

I have indeed observed the same disposition among most of the mathematicians I have known in Europe, although I could never discover the least analogy between the two sciences; unless those people suppose, that because the smallest circle has as many degrees as the largest, therefore the regulation and management of the world require no more abilities than the handling and turning of a globe; but I rather take this quality to spring from a very common infirmity of human nature, inclining us to be most curious and conceited in matters where we have least concern, and for which we are least adapted by study or nature.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

Some time after, asking a friend at court how they came to fix on that determinate number, he told me that his majesty’s mathematicians, having taken the height of my body by the help of a quadrant, and finding it to exceed theirs in the proportion of twelve to one, they concluded from the similarity of their bodies, that mine must contain at least 1724 of theirs, and consequently would require as much food as was necessary to support that number of Lilliputians.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)