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.

Needless to say, the question more or less amounts to the definition of"mathematician".

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.

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.