How many mathematicians are there

So I will say nothing more about the people who aren't here, and I will look forward to writing for the rest of this week about the people who are here.

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Not interested. Get smart. Sign up for our email newsletter. Viewed 40k times. Needless to say, the question more or less amounts to the definition of"mathematician". Improve this question. Georges Elencwajg.

I know several completely bald mathematicians. I have opened a thread in meta where you are welcome to explain your conception of maturity. Show 9 more comments. Active Oldest Votes. Improve this answer.

Jose Capco. I'll give some examples from my family, so I am very sure of the facts - one of my grandfathers, who was a chemist, and never published a math paper in his life, is listed in the MGP twice, as distinct persons - once as a student his also listed advisor was not a mathematician either and once as an advisor. My father, who is a physicist, and wrote exactly one paper that could be called math, is listed. So are 13 of his students - probably at most 1 or 2 is reasonably considered a mathematician, even if one regards many theoretical physicists as mathematicians.

Add a comment. But perhaps France suffers from a higher density of mathematicians than the world average. Alexandre Eremenko. So, that not too few of these authors should not be mathematicians but scientists in other fields.

But of course the distinction between a mathematician and a person doing mathematics in some other field is sometimes fuzzy. It is hard to define precisely who are "mathematicians", all these numbers are only rough estimates. A lot of the people that many of us would think of as "mathematicians" are probably counted as teachers in this survey; the source above says that "For example, there were about 54, jobs as postsecondary mathematical science teachers in How many mathematicians call themselves mathematicians?

It could also be the case that women in math are producing less work compared to their male colleagues. Working women shoulder more of housework and child-rearing responsibility than men, which could have a real affect on their output. But even if some women are producing less work—or God forbid, taking a few days off to have a baby—that says nothing about the quality of their work.

But academic environments often reward quantity of output over quality. Gender disparities may be especially pervasive in mathematics due of the culture of the field.

Brodsky tells me when she entered her graduate program, she was one of six women in a cohort of She was horrified to learn from a classmate that her male colleagues had exclusive social outings.

After discovering this, it was hard to feel like she was being taken seriously. There are over 35, individual members of the four leading professional mathematical sciences societies in the U. Most would call themselves mathematicians; many received their doctoral degrees outside the U. There are at least 10, more members of the societies who are graduate students or in other categories, and there are also mathematicians who are not members of any of these societies.

Although they have advanced degrees in mathematics, many of those employed in academia might call themselves professors instead of mathematicians, and similarly, those in industry and government may not have "mathematician" in their job title. The job title doesn't tell the whole story, however: These people are doing mathematics and are indeed mathematicians.