Jeff Goldblum plays mathematician Ian Malcolm in Steven Spielberg’s 1993 film Jurassic Park.
Malcolm is one of the film’s principal experts, invited to assess the safety of John Hammond’s dinosaur theme park. He is associated with chaos theory and repeatedly questions whether the park’s creators can control a biological system as complex as living dinosaurs.
Goldblum’s performance made Malcolm one of the film’s most recognizable characters. His skeptical remarks, including his observations about scientists being so focused on whether they could create dinosaurs that they failed to ask whether they should, became especially memorable.
A common mix-up is confusing Malcolm with Dr. Alan Grant, the paleontologist played by Sam Neill, or Dr. Ellie Sattler, played by Laura Dern. Goldblum returned as Malcolm in The Lost World: Jurassic Park and later appeared in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.