No, Math professors do not generally tend to use Microsoft word, contrary to comments which you might have just read. Generally speaking, they tend to write their papers by hand and then have the departmental secretary do the typing. This introduces a delay of maybe a day or two in sending out a paper to be published, but given the fact that there is usually an 18 month or more delay between an article being received by a journal and its being published – even when accepted – one sees that a day or two is nothing.

The secretary is going to do a better, quicker job than the professor could, and the professor is freed to go back and do more teaching and research, which is what the University is paying him for. To have a professor do his own typing would not be cost effective, unless, of course, he is one of the growing ranks of hapless adjuncts, in which case he’s on his own. $80,000+ per year vs. $1500/course makes all of the difference in the world, especially to the poor adjunct.

LaTeX is used quite a bit. I use it all the time. It’s much easier to create equations in it, and those equations look better than if you use Word.

There is a free version for Windows in the link below. The code that you have to use does take some getting used to. I would suggest getting a LaTeX manual. I use the one by Leslie Lampert (I think that is how it is spelled).

edit: Joe, my experience is that most mathematicians do write their own papers now that there are computer programs out there that do the typesetting for them. Certainly secretaries were used a long time ago to write all papers including dissertations. Could be wrong though.

Now if you mean that grad students are used to write papers, that is certainly true. But they use (wait for it) … LaTeX!

edit: Again, Holden, LaTeX is generally used over any other typesetting program for both papers and books.

They use Microsoft Word. You can insurt different symbols that are used in math problems.