They already had physicists and astronauts (both would be functional mathematicians as well, in order to do their jobs properly) aboard the ship. That angle was covered. It was the mental aspects of what was happening that was really screwing them over. It drove Gibarian to suicide, and Gordon to lock herself in her quarters. It made Original Snow so homicidal that he tried to kill his double almost immediately. Gibarian was looking for someone who could analyze and deal not only with the crew but with these walking talking facsimiles of human beings who seem to be created from the memories of the people who knew them but also appear to have more intellectual and emotional agency than mere "soulless" copies. In other words, someone who was experienced in the understanding and dissection of the mind.
And neither Gordon nor Snow "solved" anything. They knew these weren't the originals, but so did Chris. Seeing as their Visitors were either dead or safely back on Earth, that didn't require much in the way of logical leaps. They figured out how to destroy them for good, but that's only a "solution" in the sense that deleting an entire essay to get rid of a word you can't figure out how to spell correctly is a "solution." All any of them knew was this was happening around Solaris, a weird and mystifying place, so they figured there was a connection. That's not a solution, that's a basic first step toward identifying the problem.
(One theory I don't think I've seen is that it's possible that wasn't the real Gibrarian. There's no reason to assume Solaris could only recreate one individual as a Visitor, and it's clear they can recreate the original since they did so with Snow. If they found Gibarian's memories of Chris and his tragedy intriguing enough, they could have set up a false message. Let's face it -- any intelligent species/being would be intrigued at the thought processes of an alien lifeform, and would find a member of that alien species that actually studies the thought processes of its own species to be all the more valuable as an object of study. So it's a theory that does have a certain resonance. After all, we don't know the exact timeline of Gibarian's suicide or what sort of contact the other crew members might have had with him. They just know Chris is coming and that Gibrarian committed suicide at some point.)
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