experimentalist

American  

[ik-sper-uh-ment-uhl-ist] / ɪkˌspɛr əˈmɛnt əl ɪst /

noun

1. a person who enjoys experimenting or trying new things, especially in the arts.

2. a scientist whose research relies on experiments or who is skilled in designing and conducting them.

3. a person who subscribes to philosophical empiricism.

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adjective

1. fond of experimenting or trying new things, especially in the arts.

2. of or relating to a scientific or philosophical emphasis on experiment or experience rather than theory.

Example Sentences

But their emphasis here presents Man Ray, who was a talented portrait photographer, as an experimentalist chasing rather than creating imagery.

From The Wall Street Journal • Dec. 27, 2025

Sivak, a theorist, and Bechhoefer, an experimentalist, bring complementary approaches to their work, and they have been able to attract trainees who want to work with both.

From Science Daily • Jun. 6, 2024

This playlist is a chronological tour through Charli XCX’s many eras, from her time as a precocious club kid to her more recent reign as a forward-thinking pop experimentalist.

From New York Times • Jun. 4, 2024

A muon collider’s ability to more clearly probe Higgs physics sets it apart, says Donatella Lucchesi, an experimentalist at the University of Padua and Italy’s National Institute of Nuclear Physics.

From Science Magazine • Mar. 27, 2024

But here his crucial intellectual shortcoming came to the fore: he was not a particularly gifted experimentalist.

From "The Gene" by Siddhartha Mukherjee