biologist

biologist — noun

1. a scientist whose job is to study living things — plants, animals, or even tiny

1.nounB1
Definition

a scientist whose job is to study living things — plants, animals, or even tiny things like cells and bacteria — and how they grow, behave, and survive.

Example

Yuki is a marine biologist who tags whales off the coast of Iceland.

common compound: marine biologist

The biologists at the lab spent six months studying how the new virus spread among bats.

biologists + at + organisation

Common collocations
  • marine biologist
  • wildlife biologist
  • molecular biologist
  • evolutionary biologist
  • field biologist
  • research biologist
Synonyms
  • life scientist

    broader umbrella term covering biologists plus related researchers; more formal

  • naturalist

    older, less technical; usually someone who observes plants and animals in the wild rather than doing lab work

  • zoologist

    narrower; a biologist who specifically studies animals

Grammar Patterns

a/the biologist

biologist + at/from + organisation

marine/wildlife/molecular + biologist

Usage Note

Frequently appears with a specifying word that names the field: 'marine biologist', 'wildlife biologist', 'molecular biologist', 'evolutionary biologist'. The plain noun by itself is fine in everyday talk, but academic and news writing usually adds the specialty.

Common Mistakes

I study biologist at university.
I study biology at university.
'biologist' is the person; 'biology' is the subject.
She is biologist.
She is a biologist.
countable; needs an article.

Word family

Synonym discussion

Sense: noun/1

All four study living things, but the scope and the working style differ. A 'biologist' is the umbrella professional — anyone whose research subject is life, from a virus in a Petri dish to a forest. A 'naturalist' is the older, more romantic figure: think of someone with a notebook in the woods identifying birds and beetles, often without formal lab training. A 'zoologist' narrows the focus to animals only, so all zoologists are biologists, but a botanist (plant specialist) is not a zoologist. An 'ecologist' studies the relationships between living things and their environment — populations, food webs, climate effects — rather than a single species in isolation. Charles Darwin was famously called a 'naturalist'; a modern researcher tagging wolves in Yellowstone would be called a 'wildlife biologist' or, more specifically, an 'ecologist' if the focus is the wider ecosystem.

biologist ↗naturalist ↗zoologistecologist ↗

Common collocations

Nouns

Phrases

  • a team of biologists
  • leading biologist
  • marine biologist
  • wildlife biologist

Prepositions

  • at (institution)
  • from (organisation)
  • with (group)

Etymology

GreekFrenchEnglish

Formed from 'biology' plus the agent ending '-ist' meaning 'a person who'. 'Biology' itself comes from the Greek 'bios' meaning 'life' and 'logia' meaning 'study of'. The word entered English in the early 1800s as the science of living things became its own discipline, separate from natural history and medicine.