physicist

Noun

1. A person whose occupation specializes in the science of physics, especially at a professional level.
   • Thus we may say, that while the Naturalist employs principally the ideas of resemblance and life, the Physicist proceeds upon the ideas of force, matter, and the properties of matter. - 1840, William Whewell, “Aphorisms...
   • Physicists find themselves called in to deal with such varied problems as the reduction of noise in diesel railcars, investigation of the Hertzian stresses set up by wheel-rail contact and improvement of the insulation...
2. A believer in the theory that the fundamental phenomena of life are to be explained upon purely chemical and physical principles (opposed to vitalist).