There is little that irritates scientists more than the idea of the "boffin". This century-old meme has at least two flavours: the befuddled, bespectacled, bad-hair-day (or no-hair-day) man, socially ...

There's a show on the BBC called "Some People with Jokes". The most recent episode was titled "Some Boffins With Jokes". Several people I know were in it. I honestly can't remember if I was invited to ...

Tessa Boffin, from the series The Knight’s Move (1990), reproduced in Tessa Boffin and Jean Fraser’s , Stolen Glances: Lesbians Take Photographs, Pandora (1991) (© the estate of Tessa ...

The Beagle has landed but no one knows quite where. Another defeat for a British boffin? Or just a small hiccup on the way to scientific greatness? That's the thing about boffins - one just never ...

The word “boffin” is unhelpful, stereotypical, inaccurate, outdated and cliched according to the Institute of Physics, which has issued a call asking the media to stop using the word. But the Star has ...

Message projection: the IOP’s “Bin the Boffin” slogan has lit up the Daily Star’s offices in Canary Wharf. (Courtesy: David Parry) “Boffin” is a quintessentially British word that refers to a ...

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Many young scientists today would be mildly insulted to be called a boffin. But in the mid-20th century the ...