Dr. Ian Malcolm is the mathematician invited to inspect Jurassic Park.
Malcolm is portrayed as a specialist in chaos theory, a field concerned with how small changes can produce unpredictable results in complex systems. John Hammond invites him to the island as part of a group of experts asked to evaluate the park before its public opening.
Jeff Goldblum played Malcolm in the 1993 film, giving the character a distinctive skeptical and witty personality. Malcolm questions whether controlling dinosaur reproduction and behavior is realistic, and his warnings become important after the park’s security systems fail.
Malcolm is not the same character as Dr. Alan Grant, the paleontologist played by Sam Neill. He returns as the central character in The Lost World: Jurassic Park and appears again in Jurassic World Dominion. In the novels, Malcolm’s role and survival differ from some details of the films.