If we look for an algebraist in the RAE we will find these two meanings:
1. com. Person who studies, professes or knows algebra.
2. com. his. Surgeon dedicated especially to the healing of bone dislocations.
How can the same word have such different meanings?
We will find the solution in the origin of the term «algebra «. Although the Greek mathematician, Diophantus of Alexandria , the father of algebra, the origin of the term comes from the work «Hisab al-jabr wal-muqabala » ("science of reduction and confrontation" or "science of equations") by the Arab mathematician Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi (780-850).
From the Arabic term “al-jabr «, translated into Latin, became the term «algebra «.
And from the meaning of «al-jabr «, restoration or reduction, we have that the algebraists They were the repairmen. Although in disuse, we have examples of its use in great authors of our letters such as Cervantes or Quevedo.
Cervantes talks about algebrists in Don Quixote, in chapter XV of volume II:
Where it was fortunate to find an algebraist with whom he was cured
As well as Quevedo :
Once upon a time there was (and it's a funny story) an old lady from Moorish times, it happens in the wrinkled of the old face, grape in the drunk, fig in the round. Ladle for a beard, for a hat, a mushroom, for a headdress, a diaper, for a staff, a log. Grab one leg, cross-eyed, a string of bowling balls around your neck. Great woman of Malo and dimoños; for children, witch; for girls, coconut. Growling in tiple, praying in tone, like a snake with its hoarse whistles. Doctor of plasters and lavatories, and in doing own algebra concerts
This is the story of how the same term, algebraist, can have such different meanings.
Source:The Hypotenuse Club – Claudi Alsina