Perhaps even more interesting is the gap between mathematicians and medical doctors. Disclaimer: I was a math major who went to medical school.
There is age-old question of, "What should I major in if I want to go to medical school?" Turns out that mathematics majors have the following statistics:
1. Highest average MCAT Physical Sciences Scores
2. Highest average MCAT Biological Sciences scores (higher than biosci majors)
3. Second-highest MCAT Verbal Reasoning scores (second only to Humanities majors)
4. Highest overall average MCAT scores.
5. Second-Highest average Science GPAs (biosci majors are 0.02 higher)
6. Highest average Overall GPAs
'Course, math majors make up < 1% of medical school applicants (0.81% to be exact), so this very well may be selection bias. Still, it seems as though what medical schools are looking for are individuals with analytical (mathematical) reasoning skills.
EDIT: It's also worth noting that in many countries an undergraduate education is not a prerequisite for medical school, so there's likely to be even less math-major physicians outside of the US.
I was a math major and that comports with my very good MCAT score (although I took it after chemistry grad school). I wound up not going to med school; my boss https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamilton_O._Smith was also a math major who was doing biology (and HAD gone to med school). His buddy Clyde Hutchison, was in his day a very good programmer, he wrote one of the first FORTRAN scripts to identify open reading frames in DNA.
There is age-old question of, "What should I major in if I want to go to medical school?" Turns out that mathematics majors have the following statistics:
1. Highest average MCAT Physical Sciences Scores 2. Highest average MCAT Biological Sciences scores (higher than biosci majors) 3. Second-highest MCAT Verbal Reasoning scores (second only to Humanities majors) 4. Highest overall average MCAT scores. 5. Second-Highest average Science GPAs (biosci majors are 0.02 higher) 6. Highest average Overall GPAs
Source: https://www.aamc.org/download/321496/data/factstable18.pdf
'Course, math majors make up < 1% of medical school applicants (0.81% to be exact), so this very well may be selection bias. Still, it seems as though what medical schools are looking for are individuals with analytical (mathematical) reasoning skills.
EDIT: It's also worth noting that in many countries an undergraduate education is not a prerequisite for medical school, so there's likely to be even less math-major physicians outside of the US.