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  1. boffin
    ˈbä-fən
    noun
    a scientific expertone involved in technological research
  2. People also ask
    A boffin is a scientist, especially one who is doing research. The boffins of Imperial College in London think they may have found a solution. Very clever people are sometimes called boffins . A computer boffin is set to make £5million from his revolutionary photo technology. Collins COBUILD Advanced Learner’s Dictionary.
    People who won prizes in mathematics and abstruse subjects of that kind, deservedly, possibly, were considered to be the boffins of the class. Similar boffins before the last war convinced everyone who would listen to them that the last war would be fought under circumstances dictated by gas. That was the approach of the legal boffins.
    It is a relative newcomer to the English language, only appearing toward the end of World War II. Despite its youth, however, the origins of "boffin" are a mystery to us. The term was probably first applied by British Royal Air Force members to the scientists and engineers working closely with radar technology.
    Post war, Sir Robert Watson-Watt, the British radar pioneer, cited Robert Hanbury Brown, who had been at RAF Bawdsey (later part of TRE), as the prototypical boffin, noting: "It is quite wrong to use the word ‘boffin’ simply to describe a scientist or technician; a boffin is essentially a middleman, a bridge between two worlds ...".
    en.wikipedia.org