physicist
Americannoun
noun
Etymology
Origin of physicist
Explanation
A physicist is a scientist who studies and is trained in physics, which is the study of nature, especially how matter and energy behave. Do you ever wonder how things work? If you're interested in what makes magnets attract iron or what's happening in atoms, then maybe you should become a physicist. Physicists study physics, which is related to the word physical. Physicists are interested in everything that physically exists, from tiny gadgets to massive stars. It takes many years of school to become a physicist, and physicists work on complex projects such as space travel and new energy sources.
Vocabulary lists containing physicist
Albert Einstein
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Bomb
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The Subtle Knife
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Physicist Alain Aspect was awarded a Nobel Prize in 2022 for his experiments with entangled photons, the framework Pasqal was built upon.
From Barron's • Apr. 8, 2026
Physicist Dr. Robert Goddard launched a rocket from a farm in Massachusetts in 1926.
From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 7, 2026
Physicist Bhupal Dev in Arts & Sciences used observations from this neutron star merger -- an event identified in astronomical circles as GW170817 -- to derive new constraints on axion-like particles.
From Science Daily • Mar. 6, 2024
Physicist Carlo Rovelli, for example, notes in his delightful and skinny 2014 book, “Seven Brief Lessons on Physics”, that without quantum mechanics there would be no transistors.
From Salon • Jan. 30, 2024
Physicist Mark Oliphant, arriving at the Cavendish from Australia in the mid-1920s, remarked on its “uncarpeted floor boards, dingy varnished pine doors and stained plaster walls, indifferently lit by a skylight with dirty glass.”
From "Big Science" by Michael Hiltzik
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
