A brief history of the ‘physicist’

Iwan Rhys Morus

doi:10.1038/s42254-025-00806-8

A brief history of the ‘physicist’

Iwan Rhys Morus^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

Department of History and Welsh History

Research output: Contribution to journal › Comment/Debate

Abstract

Although the practice of doing physics has a long history, the term ‘physicist’ is less than 200 years old. Historian Iwan Rhys Morus traces the roots of the word and discusses its slow acceptance by the community it came to describe.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	64-65
Number of pages	2
Journal	Nature Reviews Physics
Volume	7
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1038/s42254-025-00806-8
Publication status	Accepted/In press - 28 Nov 2024

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A brief history of the ‘physicist’

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