most recent 30 from http://mathoverflow.net 2013-05-24T04:49:55Z http://mathoverflow.net/feeds/question/5485 http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5/rdf http://mathoverflow.net/questions/5485/how-many-mathematicians-are-there Georges Elencwajg 2009-11-14T08:27:25Z 2012-12-08T16:30:15Z

<p>Although we are not so numerous as other respected professionals, like for example lawyers, I wonder if we could come up with a reasonable estimate of our population.</p> <p>Needless to say, the question more or less amounts to the definition of"mathematician".</p> <p>Since I should like to count only research mathematicians (and not, say, high-school teachers) some criterion of publishing should be applied. But it should not be too strict in order not to exclude Grothendieck, for example, who has not published any mathematics for a long time.</p> <p>An excuse for asking a question so soft as to verge on the flabby is that it might be considered an exercise in Fermi-type order of magnitude estimation.</p>

http://mathoverflow.net/questions/5485/how-many-mathematicians-are-there/5487#5487 Jose Capco 2009-11-14T08:45:14Z 2009-11-14T08:45:14Z

<p>Current count of <a href="http://genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/" rel="nofollow">Mathematics Genealogy Project</a> is 137672 (I am assuming that the PhD students that graduated are ranked as "research mathematicians"). But the problem is.. Mathematics Genealogy is mostly for universities of developed countries. There could be some really good university in Russia, China or Korea out there that doesn't give us the correct statistics. Another problem is.. Mathematics Genealogy Project counts even the dead mathematicians (like Hilbert, Hasse, Kepler and so on).. and I am assuming you want a report of living mathematicians.. but hey, I'm quite surprised by the number even 200k is pretty low for the living! </p>

http://mathoverflow.net/questions/5485/how-many-mathematicians-are-there/5490#5490 Thomas Sauvaget 2009-11-14T09:28:36Z 2009-11-14T09:28:36Z

<p>In <a href="http://smf.emath.fr/Publications/ExplosionDesMathematiques/pdf/smf-smai%5Fexplo-maths%5F92-97.pdf" rel="nofollow">an article</a> written a few years ago, Jean-Pierre Bourguignon estimates that there are around 80 000 mathematicians worldwide, with the AMS having about 15 000 members. </p> <p>For France he says 4000 work in academia ("a reliable estimate") and about 2000 in the private sector. Since there are about 60 million inhabitants there, that's 1 mathematician per 10 000 inhabitants.</p>

http://mathoverflow.net/questions/5485/how-many-mathematicians-are-there/5819#5819 Kevin O'Bryant 2009-11-17T14:20:12Z 2009-11-17T14:20:12Z

<p>Typing "how many mathematicians" into Wolfram|Alpha, yields the information that there are 3160 mathematicians in the United States. The source listed is the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, and this site in particular (<a href="http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos043.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos043.htm</a>). That site contains such gems about our profession as: "Mathematicians usually work in comfortable offices."</p> <p>Cool.</p>

http://mathoverflow.net/questions/5485/how-many-mathematicians-are-there/70488#70488 Amit 2011-07-16T07:56:11Z 2011-07-16T07:56:11Z

<p>By definition mathematician is a person who holds phd in mathematics. Per Wikipedia only 2.94% of population in US out of 310 million hold phd in anything. And math phd's are very rare. By estimation I would assume that only 0.001% of total population would hold phd in mathematics. So that does end up as around 3100 mathematicians in US. Many of the math teachers in high school or community colleges may not be holding phd in math. So technically they are not mathematicians. </p>

http://mathoverflow.net/questions/5485/how-many-mathematicians-are-there/105174#105174 Kevin Walker 2012-08-21T16:18:25Z 2012-08-21T16:18:25Z

<p>Here are yearly totals from the <a href="http://www.genealogy.ams.org/" rel="nofollow">Mathematics Genealogy Project</a>. (This is as of August 2012.)</p> <pre> Year # of Math PhDs known to MGP --------------------------------------------- 1960 593 1961 674 1962 863 1963 1002 1964 1203 1965 1309 1966 1439 1967 1549 1968 1762 1969 1949 1970 2031 1971 1986 1972 2057 1973 1997 1974 1997 1975 1922 1976 1859 1977 1830 1978 1911 1979 1922 1980 1873 1981 1822 1982 1939 1983 2012 1984 1966 1985 2023 1986 2102 1987 2267 1988 2526 1989 2703 1990 2884 1991 3009 1992 3328 1993 3419 1994 3650 1995 3764 1996 4034 1997 4053 1998 4181 1999 4065 2000 4275 2001 3932 2002 3815 2003 3807 2004 3919 2005 4751 2006 4445 2007 4332 2008 4194 2009 3877 2010 3714 2011 3235 2012 1372 ------------------------ Total 1960-2012 139143 </pre> <p>For comparison, the total number of records in the MGP at this time is 163611.</p> <p>Also, this <a href="http://www.ams.org/profession/career-info/math-work/math-work" rel="nofollow">(undated) AMS page</a> says there are 35800 members of the four main U.S. mathematics professional societies.</p>

http://mathoverflow.net/questions/5485/how-many-mathematicians-are-there/115804#115804 Alexandre Eremenko 2012-12-08T16:30:15Z 2012-12-08T16:30:15Z

<p>I am surprised that nobody mentioned the Math Reviews authors database.</p> <p>Currently it has about 650000 authors. I suppose that about 50% of them are dead, which gives an estimate of 300-400 K living mathematicians. Of course, as it was noticed in the question, it is hard to establish a criterion, whom do we call mathematicians. I think about 1/3 or 1/2 of the people in this database are those who published only one paper.</p> <p>Such sources as Math Genealogy project are much less reliable, because they do not include most Soviet, Chinese and other mathematicians. But it also includes people who defended a PhD in mathematics, published one paper (or even did not publish anything) and switched to some other activity.</p>