Number of mathematicians

[Los]

If you search for "how many mathematicians" on wolframalpha.com, it gives about 3000 in the US (based no doubt on AMS figures). I would imagine there are ~5000 in the world, based on this. Is that correct?

[gauss202]

What do you count as a "mathematician"? Do you mean people with Ph.D's in mathematics? Do you also count statistics or operations research? Or do you only count people who have published something "mathematical"? There are a few people with degrees in things like mechanical or electrical engineering who are doing what you would consider "mathematical" work.

[Los]

well, i guess they are counting those people who graduate with Ph.D in math, whose job afterwards is concerned principally with research (i.e. they are at universities with small teaching loads, either teach:research= 1:1 or 2:1), or in industry doing mainly mathematics.

[rosetaylor01]

ya they count the people who did Ph.D in mathematics. By the way, do you consider all the people who graduate with maths or only doctorate in maths as an mathematician..

[Los]

I would say that the count is based on more than having a math doctorate, since then the number would be much higher-just think of the shear number of people who write their doctoral thesis, graduate, and then maybe write one more paper that's similar to their thesis and never write another paper again.

Maybe the count is based on the number of people that have published a minimum amount of papers (say, 5) and have a academic job.

[Boy Soprano II]

Wolfram Alpha is grossly wrong. As of 2007, there were over 20,000 full time math faculty in the United States, according to the AMS (see page 2). Of these, less than 4,000 did not have doctorates.

Edit: I think the disparity may come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which may have tricked Wolfram Alpha by treating "mathematicians" (2,770) and "postsecondary mathematical science teachers" (45,700) as two separate (disjoint?) groups.

[Los]

Hm, I have recently read the 5,000 mathematicians figure elsewhere (In a maths text). I'll provide the full reference and citation later. I do not think there are 20,000 math doctorates that are out there regularly publishing papers, if in the Annals or Fibonacci Quarterly.

The number 5,000 for the US makes sense, too, if one thinks that the number of Tier I + Tier II schools is about 100. If one supposes each department has between 30 and 50 profs, then thats between 3,000 and 5,000. And then maybe a few hundred that are bouncing between academia and industry.

There are thousands of colleges out there, and if you count those guys, who may have doctorates in math but don't publish more than one or two papers after their Thesis, then the number would be about 20,000.

Anyway, I think it's important to remember that there are only 5,000 employed people out there publishing. It makes you realize how competitive things really are.

[Boy Soprano II]

I still think that this 5,000 number is way too small. I remain convinced that such estimates are due to book-keeping mistakes.

Perhaps you don't realize how many math publications there are. The list I linked gives a list of the serials refrenced by the AMS's Mathematical Reviews (a listing of synopses of math articles published) as of November 2008. There are a few repetitions, and some journals that overlap with fields such as physics, and a few look like advanced textbook series, but the listing still contains over 2700 entries. Furthermore, the list is compiled by an American society, so it probably overlooks a few obscure journals published overseas---it even omits some publications here, such as the Harvard Math Review (admittedly an expository undergraduate math journal, but a math journal nonetheless). Around 850 of the listed serials are read cover-to-cover for Mathematical Reviews.

I think it probably takes more than 5,000 authors to fill more than 2,000 journal-years of math every year.

According to the AMS, United States universities have granted around 1,000 math doctorates each academic year listed in the 2008 report (i.e., at least since 1998-9).

I also think you are underestimating the number of colleges out there. There are more than 6,000 post-secondary institutions accredited by bodies recognized by the U.S. department of education. Sure, not all of them are high-brow universities, but most mathematicians are not world-renowned mathematicians, by definition.

In any case, I think it's misleading to look only at people who regularly publish in big-name journals. To me, that seems like trying to guage the number of professional violinists in the world by looking only at people who sit on the front stand of internationally recognized orchestras. My parents are not prolific authors, but as math professors, they've made enough of a living to raise children pretty comfortably and send at least one of them to college, so I'm not sure what they are if they're not mathematicians.

[Los]

Well, I think the quote is in reference to the elite, the number of people at the forefront of industry and academia in the US. Im curious how they came up with that magic number

2,000 publications a year worldwide, right?

[Hannah Hayse]

[Los]

The quote i was thinking of is from the (nice little) book Experimental Mathematics in Action, Bailey, et al.

Now is a wonderful time to be a (computational) mathematician. This is forcibly brought home by the Business Week cover storry of January 23, 2006. It comments

These slices of our lives now sit in databases, many of them in the public domain. From a business point of view, they're just beginning to be analyzed. ... The rise of mathematics is heating uup the job market for luminary quants, especially at the internet powerhouses where new math grds with six/figure salaries and rich stock deals. Tom Leightom, an entrepreneur and applied math prof at mit, says "all of my students have standing offers at yahoo and google." Top mathematicians are becoming a new global elite. It's a force of barely 5,000 by some guesstimnates, but every bit as powerful as the armies of harvard university mba's who shook up corner suites a generation ago.



ok, it seems that i misread the quote, and i had to type it out (it seems) to realize that.