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biochemist

biochemist

13 4.4
A scientist who studies how chemicals work inside living things
  • noun
  • /ˌbaɪoʊˈkɛmɪst/
translation icon : bioquímico
  • "It's been lonely," agreed Thomas Eads, a biochemist at Purdue University.

No chemist had ever seen a carbon cobalt bond and they thought, in fact, biochemists were crazy that they even proposed such a structure.

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Examples

  • In 1952, biochemist Arie J. Haagen-Smit discovered that the primary ingredient in Los Angeles smog was ground-level ozone.

    Academic text (2005)
  • The oldest, our beautiful daughter, Sarah, is, like her mother, a biochemist.

    Fiction book (1998)
  • You can make a good living as a biochemist.

  • Prior to being a C.E.O. I was a biochemist.

  • Listen, I'm just a biochemist.

  • Not the opportunities a young, gifted, vibrant biochemist really deserves.

  • My point is, I'm a biochemist and there's no life down here.

  • Perhaps most touching is the nine-year-old daughter of a biochemist I met in Kiev.

    Academic text (1993)
  • She is a molecular biologist and biochemist who is going to talk about forensic DNA testing.

  • My mom was a biochemist at a time when there weren't that many female scientists.

Surface Forms

biochemist singular
biochemists plural

Morphology

biochemist = chemist (semi-transparent) = bio + chemist

The word is built from the recognizable prefix 'bio-' and the noun 'chemist', but the resulting meaning refers to a specialist in biochemistry rather than a straightforward 'biological chemist'.

Etymology

Biochemist joins bio- 'life', as in biology, and chemist, a person who studies chemicals. So a biochemist is a scientist who studies the chemical processes that happen in living things.