Science Wizard

You can trust him. He's a doctor and a sorcerer.

"Not only are these mechs armoured with titanium, they also possess magical reactors. Yes, you're allowed to clap, gentlemen. Who says magic and technology have to be at odds?"

— Ludwig Von Koopa to his subordinates, Fallen Kingdom

There are characters who study the sciences and there are those who study magic. A Science Wizard is a character who is skilled in both. Normally magic and science are treated as two opposing forces but it should be noted that magic itself is usually a skill in fiction that people can learn if they dedicate themselves to it similar to scientific fields.

This can be justified in-universe by treating magic itself as a sort of science. In that case, it usually crosses over with Omnidisciplinary Scientist. If the magic is Sufficiently Analyzed Magic, this trope could also apply.

A Science Wizard can be expected to be a Badass Bookworm due to the combat applications magic often has in fiction.

Not to be confused with Techno Wizard, someone whose feats with technology merely seems wizard-like without delving into anything magical. Contrast Magic Versus Science, Science Destroys Magic and The Magic Versus Technology War. See also Magitek, a common result of this practice and Boxing Lessons for Superman, where a character learns mundane skills to improve their supernatural abilities.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Bleach:
  • Sosuke Aizen, Kisuke Urahara and Mayuri Kurotsuchi are skilled in using Kido and both have applied their knowledge of spiritual energy towards scientific pursuits.
    • Aizen and Urahara both separately created the hogyoku, a device that allowed Shinigami and Hollows to acquire the powers of the other race and they oppose each other because of their different attitudes towards how the hogyoku should be used, or even if it should be used at all.
    • Urahara also figured out how to restore Ichigo's lost Shinigami powers.
    • Mayuri is an expert at body modification which he has used on himself and was able to create the Artificial Human Nemu, and spent decades experimenting on Quincies; his most significant fight occurs when he intervenes in the battle Uryuu Ishida and Renji Abarai are losing against the Espada, Szayelaporro. Like Mayuri, Szayelaporro is a Mad Scientist who uses Functional Magic to enhance his scientific endeavours, which also includes body modification. Their battle ends up being waged inside Nemu's body, ultimately leading to Szayelaporro's defeat via a unique drug that Mayuri had invented and infected Nemu's body with, just in case anyone ever tried to weaponise her body against him.
  • Uryu Isihida is a Quincy and can manipulate spirit energy. At the end of the series, he becomes a doctor.
• A Certain Magical Index: Alestiar Crowley is the world's greatest magician who quit magic to study science and technology and eventually became the de facto leader of the Science Side . It is for this reason he is considered the Magic Side's greatest embarrassment.
• Naruto: Medical ninja combine knowledge of chakra and anatomy to do their jobs as field medics. There is also Orochimaru who is skilled in jutsu and has done a number of twisted experiments.
• Shaman King: Johann Faust VIII was a brilliant doctor who discovered a cure for his lover Eliza's fatal disease. When she died at the hands of a burglar, Faust turned to the art of necromancy to bring her back to life.
• The Irregular at Magic High School: In this setting, magic is a form of technology meaning that anyone who uses magic could qualify as a Science Wizard. Tatsuya is a world-renowned pioneer of Magitek under the alias of Taurus Silver.
• Soul Eater: Medusa is a powerful witch and brilliant scientist who created the Black Blood, a synthetic body fluid that can be used as a weapon.

Card Games

• Yu-Gi-Oh!: Magical Scientist is a Spellcaster-type monster whose name and design obviously invoke this trope.

Comic Books

• The DCU:
  • Doctor Fate: Some incarnations qualify as a Science Wizard. Kent V. Nelson was a psychologist, while Khalid Nassour is a medical student. There is also the villain Ian Karkull who was a trained archeologist, physicist and engineer before he mastered shadow magic.
  • Doom Patrol: Before he was a member of the Brotherhood of Evil, Jean-Louis Droo was a computer scientist. He turned to voodoo after it was used to save his father's life from illness were modern medicine failed. As the supervillain Houngan, Droo combines his knowledge of computer science with voodoo practices — his weapons are an electro needle stylus and a high-tech Voodoo Doll.
• Gold Digger: Brianna often works her magical abilities into her tech (unwittingly, even). Her Peebos are part AI, part golem, and Peebri has been observed with an aura. After marrying Zan and becoming a druid protecting a forest in Jade Realm, her empowering of the life there has a distinct Magitek theme; for instance, Treants that look like Humongous Mecha, along with armed bears.
• Marvel Universe:
  • The Avengers:
    • Brother Voodoo is a voodoo witch doctor with 12 years of education and practice as an accredited psychologist.
    • Dr. Druid is trained in the ways of the druids and has an M.D. in psychiatry from Harvard.
  • Devil's Reign: The Superior Four tie-in series has a version of Otto Octavius who is a composite of Dr. Octopus, Dr. Strange and Dr. Doom. As expected, he excels in both science and magic.
  • Doctor Strange: Before he became Sorcerer Supreme, Stephen Strange was a renowned surgeon. He still occasionally provides medical consultation.
  • Fantastic Four: Doctor Doom can rival if not match Reed Richards in just about any scientific discipline and is also a powerful sorcerer.
  • Thanos is a genius in virtually all known fields of science, having augmented his own physiology and created devices such as a chair capable of time travel and interstellar flight. He has also displayed some knowledge of the mystic arts — he once cursed Deadpool to never die so Deadpool could never be with Death whom Thanos was in love with.
  • X-Men:
    • Forge's mutant power gives him a natural intuitive for inventing mechanical devices. He also has some knowledge of Native American magic though he rarely uses it.
    • After a meeting with Doctor Strange, the time-displaced, young version Beast mastered a combination of science and magic which allowed him to return himself and his four teammates to the past for a few minutes. Given that the adult versions regained the memories their past selves had acquired, this implies that adult Beast also has those abilities.
    • Apocalypse is a scientific genius with knowledge in various areas including physics, engineering, genetics, and biology, all of which are more advanced than conventional science. House Of X reveals he has a formidable knowledge and command of sorcery which he puts to work in his position as adviser for the island's incarnation of Excalibur.
• Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics): Dr. Finitevus is a scientist with robotics and mechanical expertise rivaling that of Dr. Eggman. He is also imbued with magical abilities that allow him to tap into Chaos energy.
• Wizards of Mickey: Goofy was born to be a wizard — literally, as everyone in his family is fated for a certain job, which in his case is wizardry — and is fairly adept at magic when he needs to be, but he tends to favor science and technology up to building a flying Humongous Mecha.

Fan Works

• Child of the Storm:
  • Doctor Strange blows more or less everyone out the water - the most skilled sorcerer ever to live, and quite probably the most brilliant medical doctor. He's something of an Omnidisciplinary Scientist and an Omnidisciplinary Mage. Given that he's actually 500,000 years old and can Time Travel to learn from the best, this is more or less justified.
  • Asgardians and other peoples of the Nine Realms specialise in Magitek, so tend to be this as a matter of course, though Loki tends to be most conversant in the mundane sciences. Atlantis, which they helped uplift, ended up much the same way (until everything went horribly wrong).
  • Dumbledore, meanwhile, is not only a master of transfiguration and alchemy (the most scientific magical disciplines), he's also essentially a hobbyist polymath. If there's a magical or scientific field, you can bet that he's dabbled in it in his spare time and corresponded with experts on the subject.
  • A significant number of members of the White Council spend centuries of their lives in academic study, and even the less academically trained Harry Dresden tends to explain magic in scientific terms when he can, even using a whiteboard to do so when teaming up with Coulson's SHIELD team.
  • Wanda Maximoff, having been raised and trained by the aforementioned Doctor Strange, not only understands her magical powers in scientific terms, but also her mutant ones, offhandedly suggesting that she's an expert in quantum physics, nuclear physics, and probability theory.
  • Doctor Reynolds is a villainous example, mixing science and magic. He's noted to have been ahead of his time - while his theories would achieve acceptance in the semi Unmasqued World of the second book if presented right, about twenty years earlier they got him laughed out of academia. A combination of wounded pride, stubborn persistence, amoral backers, and a terrible case of This Is Your Brain on Evil ensue.
• Dungeon Keeper Ami: The titular character is a Bookworm from a universe like Real Life, with chemistry and stuff, while being Trapped in Another World with magic, which she can study with her Magical Computer.
• Making Magic by icepixie (and its remix, Gone With the Wand by Gray Cardinal) reveal that the Stargate SG-1 scientist Samantha Carter is also a wizard and graduate of Hogwarts.

Films — Animation

• Justice League Dark: This is actually reversed with Dr. Destiny, who started out as a man of science before being corrupted by his study of dark alchemical magic.
• The Sword in the Stone: The wizard Merlin is as much a man of science as he is of magic. His home is decorated with scientific instruments and journals from hundreds of years into the future, which he's shown indulging himself in when he isn't teaching Wart. He also makes scientific study a large part of his tutoring, with many of his lessons teaching Wart the mechanics of how the world around him works.

Films — Live-Action

• The Sorcerer's Apprentice: Dave, the titular apprentice, is a physics major and technically inclined genius prior to being taught sorcery by Balthazar. Balthazar may also count, as he is able to explain magic to Dave in scientific terms. In fact, it's implied that an understanding of science is necessary to perform magic.
• Star Wars: The Sith tend to be both skilled wielders of the Force and masters of advanced technology, often mixing the two with little distinction. Many notable Sith were particularly skilled in the field of biotechnology, using it to extend their own lifespans or to create a variety of Force-wielding monstrosities.

Literature

• The Belgariad: When Aldur's disciples aren't off on adventures saving the world or studying prophecies to help them save the world, they're studying how the world works—science, essentially. They tend to understand it better than most mortals do.
• Discworld: Professor Ponder Stibbons, Wizard, studies Quantum Magic with the intensity that researchers on other worlds might give to Quantum Physics.
• The Dresden Files: Wizards can live for centuries and are often academically inclined, so many White Council members collect doctorates in their fields of interest. Joseph Listens-to-Wind is a master of healing magic who also attends medical school every few decades to stay contemporary.
• Elemental Masters: This is the case with most healing mages who combine science with their aptitude for elemental magic. The most notable are the number of Earth Masters who are also doctors.
• I Did NOT Give That Spider Superhuman Intelligence!: Cyber Angel’s sword is implied to be magical, but she flies around on a Hover Board.
• Legends of the Red Sun: In a far future so distant that the sun has gone red, humanity had gone beyond Magic from Technology and actually discovered that magic indeed exists - that particular words and sentences can alter reality. The scientist turned sorcerer who discovered this was Frater Mercury who wrote many spells into the Book of Transformations and himself became a Physical God who can warp reality.
• Monster: A Novel of Frankenstein: Victor Frankenstein's experiments are a combination of science and dark magic which has the capacity to resuscitate the dead. Victor himself uses dark magic to restrain Friedrich Hoffman after reconstructing him as a patchwork creature.
• The Scholomance: The cafeteria's automated Miracle Food dispensers are an exceptional feat of magic, requiring expert knowledge of both enchantment and nutritional science to transmute base matter into a healthy diet.

Live-Action TV

• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • Willow is the most academically successful of the Scooby Gang. Before becoming the team's primary magic expert, she was very good with computers and helped Giles with research.
  • Jenny Calendar was a computer science teacher and a magic expert. She and Giles briefly clashed over merging technology with magic.
• Charmed: Macy possesses magical powers like her sisters and is also a biology student. Her scientific knowledge often comes in handy when simple magic isn't enough.
• Power Rangers: Zordon the Big Good from Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers throughout Power Rangers in Space. He is described as a space wizard but has been known to rely more on technology he creates with his Robot Buddy Alpha. Some of the technology is powered by magical items.
• Supergirl (2015): Lena Luthor is a tech genius specializing in nanotechnology. The final season reveals that her birth mother was a witch and that Lena has inherited her magical potential from her.
• Wizards of Waverly Place: Justin Russo is the smartest of the Russo siblings when it comes to both magic and human academics. In the episode "Franken Girl", he creates a Frankenstein's Monster using a combination of magic and computer technology.

Tabletop Games

• Ars Magica: The Order of Hermes has a strong scholarly tradition, so almost all magi have training in Artes Liberales (the core of medieval higher education) and Philosophiae. In addition to their mundane applications, these skills add power to Ritual Magic.
• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • Wizards have been the most frequently characterized as a scholar of some kind throughout the game's history. Most colleges and guilds dedicated to studying science are run by wizards. Certain Background options in 5th Edition allow one to apply this trope to other spellcasting classes.
  • The Artificer has this trope as a fundamental part of their class, combining arcana with applied science to make magic-infused constructs and gadgets, as well as magic items and potions.
• Mage: The Awakening: The game has a Point Build System and an Urban Fantasy setting, so many mages invest in skills like Academics and Science to support their magical abilities. Certain powerful mages are excellent academics and researchers in their own right, looking for supernatural insights in the material world and vice versa.
• Rifts: It is possible to create items where a semi-technological device is imbued with magic, and several of the setting's more advanced societies (such as the Splugorth, most of the power-players of the Three Galaxies, and most primarily magic-using nations) use a combination of magic, Magitek and tech with little to no distinction. In the Palladium Megaverse, extremism one way or the other is the wrong answer — pro-tech, anti-magic nations to be speciesist, militant totalitarian regimes, while pro-magic, anti-tech nations tend to be literal demonic hell-holes or Hidden Elf Villages.
• Shadowrun: While installing cybernetic implants and practicing magic does not mix, regular technology and magic has no such restrictions. Several colleges worldwide offer magical studies, and several scientific fields have been permanently affected by the return of magic to the Sixth World. Awakened can command extremely prestigious positions and salaries in several of them (especially medicine, biology and several forms of engineering) with the relevant education. At least one school of magic (Chaos magic) can use technological items as magical reagents for rituals if they are relevant to the intended goal (like using a wildlife documentary to summon a Beast Spirit).
• Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay:
  • The Imperial Colleges of Magic require their students to train in academic knowledge skills alongside their magical studies. In particular, Celestial Wizards and Alchemists often specialize in astronomy and science, respectively.
  • The Chaos Dwarfs have kept their cousins' talent for engineering, but they also have access to magic. While mastering both at once is an extremely rare occurence, masters of either fields all have some dabbling knowledge in the other.
• Warhammer 40,000 has the God-Emperor of Mankind. He's a Physical God who was Earth's top scientist and greatest psyker in a setting where psychic powers are the same as sorcery.

Toys

• Jewelpet: Sapphie is a Gadgeteer Genius and is one of the best magic users among the Jewelpets.
• SuperThings: Enigma was originally a young apprentice in Professor K.'s stead. A combination of him being interested in magic and learning Professor K.'s true evil nature left him abandoning the cause. As such, he knows a large number of scientific skills, and still makes robots and other vehicles for the side of the heroes. However, magic is still his big forte, which he uses to increase his powers further.

Video Games

• Arcanum:
  • Downplayed in that while Magic Vs Science is as immutable as the laws of physics (literally: science applies physics, magic breaks physics, combining the two never works), there's nothing stopping a character from taking both scientific and magical skills, they just won't be good at either.
  • One newspaper mentions a man who trained in both science and magic attempting to make a magic-powered gun despite both his mentors telling him it'd backfire. Even the demon summoned into the gun laughed at the inventor's foolishness before disappearing.
• Bayonetta: The Umbra Witches were trained in magic and had some aptitude for science as well. A trip through time in Bayonetta 2 introduced the Umbran Armor, a a heavy-duty, vehicular type of transport invented and used by the Umbra Witches against their angelic foes.
• BlazBlue: Kokonoe Mercury is a brilliant scientist and the daughter of Konoe Mercury, one of the most powerful mages in the BlazBlue universe. Kokonoe's prominent feats have been reviving Tager through cybernetics and the activation of Lambda by bonding soul to the empty homunculus. She notably hates magic and thinks science is superior, even though she is capable of magic herself (but only if she's pushed enough).
• The Consuming Shadow: The Wizard is implied a scientist who wishes to use magic to help propel the world and defeat the approaching shadows. She apparently hits a roadblock from her colleges who finds her ideas laughable.
• Final Fantasy XIV: The Sage healer job practices the emergent art of somanoutics, which is said to combine traditional sorcery with modern medicine and aetherology. They have a strong doctoral motif and use flying foci called nouliths to heal allies and blast foes with beams of aether.
• Guilty Gear: Sol Badguy is a powerful magic user and excellent engineer. His inventions include the Outrage, a device meant to channel and magnify magic energy, and Gear Cell Suppressor, the Martial Arts Headband he wears which is designed to both isolate and regulate the Gear cells in his body in order for him maintain a humanoid appearance.
• Jak and Daxter: The Blue Sage has studied and mastered blue eco. He is also a Gadgeteer Genius having created a levitation machine to lift a boulder blocking the pathway to the evil Lurker Klaww.
• Shovel Knight:
  • Plague Knight is a master alchemist/wizard who specializes in combining magic with mad science to make Stuff Blowing Up. He's addressed as both alchemist and wizard throughout the game, and he is the Order of No Quarter's resident magician. The arranged version of his stage theme is also entitled "The Science Wizard".
  • Tinker Knight is an inventor whose own work combines magic with mechanical engineering. Unlike Plague Knight, he isn't dressed or widely known as a wizard, though the two of them do respect each other as kindred spirits.
• Tales Series:
  • Tales of Destiny: Philia Felice is a scientist who creates chemical mixtures and a powerful Black Mage. When she's not wielding Clemente in battle she fights with her explosive chemical vials.
  • Tales of Destiny 2: Dr. Harold Berselius is both an Omnidisciplinary Scientist and the World's Smartest Woman, but also a very powerful red mage.
  • Tales of the Abyss: Dr. Jade Curtis is similarly a great scientist and a great magus. He was so powerful the villains sealed away his magic in fear it would be used against them.

Webcomics

• Aurora (2019): Erin Ruunaser is an academic and explorer who uses magic as a research tool in a world where magic and physics aren't easy to separate. He takes pride in his work and complains about other parties' "wildly unscientific" approach to magic.
• El Goonish Shive: Tedd is one of the few magic users who applies scientific method to their study of magic. This rare combination results in Tedd being offered a lab and funding.
• The Order of the Stick: Downplayed with Redcloak, the only spellcaster who summons elementals made out of chemical elements rather than air, earth, fire, and water. Titanium Elementals have several considerable advantages over standard Earth Elementals, however gauche they might seem to traditionalist wizards.
  Redcloak: What? Some of us got passing grades in Chem.
• Unsounded: Pymary works through precise manipulation of Aspects of reality, so the talented spellwrights are the ones who train up in physics, biology, and materials science alongside the Language of Magic. In one side story, Wizarding School students discover and write an academic paper about the properties of laser light.

Western Animation

• Castlevania: Dracula is both a learned scientist and sorcerer. He taught his wife Lisa advanced medicinal techniques, displays great magical skill in his fight with the main heroes and lives in a Magitek castle.
• Di-Gata Defenders: Erik is skilled in stonecasting like the other Defenders and is also a great engineer and inventor. This also applies to his Evil Counterpart Flinch.
• Masters of the Universe:
  • He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (1983): The episode "A Friend In Need" conclusively reveals that Hordak was a trained sorcerer who turned his back on magic in favor of science. This is most likely a throwback to the original Mattel mini-comics wherein Hordak was an extradimensional warlock who was billed as Skeletor's own magical mentor.
  • She-Ra: Princess of Power: There once was an evil warlock called Galen Nycroft who terrorized Eternia for years. When Time began to catch up to him and his powers started to wane, he began seeking other methods to regain his abilities. Learning the ways of science, especially gene modification, he experimented on himself, eventually becoming the evil scientist and rival to Man-At-Arms; Modulok.
• Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm: This show's version of Nightwolf is this. Like in the games he is a Magical Native American but the show also makes him the heroes' computer expert and Mission Control.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: Twilight Sparkle is incredibly adept at casting spells with unicorn magic, but also frequently displays interests in scientific research, such as conducting research to find a scientific explanation for Pinkie Pie's "Pinkie Sense" in "Feeling Pinkie Keen".
• Super Robot Monkey Team Hyper Force Go: The Alchemist was trained in both science and magic, and sought to use this knowledge to help the world. Unfortunately, he was corrupted by the Dark Ones and became the Skeleton King.
• Dexter's Laboratory: Mandark is a super scientist on par with Dexter. His second episode has him turn to black magic after his lab was destroyed.

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