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Boffin
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Boffin
Boffin is a British slang term for a scientist, engineer, or other person engaged in technical or scientific research and development. A "boffin" was viewed by some in the regular military or government services as odd, quirky or peculiar, though quite bright and essential to helping in the war effort through having and developing the key ideas leading to transformative military capabilities.
The origins and etymology of boffin are obscure. A link to the mathematician and evolutionary theorist Buffon has been proposed. Alternatively, linguist Eric Partridge proposed the term derived from Nicodemus Boffin, the good-hearted 'golden dustman' character who appears in the novel Our Mutual Friend (1864/5) by Charles Dickens, described there as a "very odd-looking old fellow indeed". In the novel, Mr Boffin pursues a late-life education, employing Silas Wegg to teach him to read.
William Morris also has a man called Boffin, based on Charles Dickens and said to be a variant of 'Biffin', meet the newly arrived time traveller in his novel News from Nowhere (1890). Dickens had referred to a 'Miss Biffins', an artist with only vestigial arms and legs, in Martin Chuzzlewit (1843). Thus at this time a 'Boffin' is a good-hearted person who has suffered from 'hard times', been ill-regarded, taken an opportunity to better themselves and done well, demonstrating remarkable social mobility. Possibly ill-favoured in appearance, possibly artistic.
In 1894 Augustine Birrell invented a fictional character – Rev. Boffin B.A. – to epitomize those who bothered fellow Liberal politician Sir Frank Lockwood with seeming trifles. Sir Frank turned the joke on Birrell by writing letters to the papers and critical of him as if from Boffin, later published a popular book of cartoons on the affair and was only then identified as the author, as described in Birrell's humorous biography of Sir Frank.
J. R. R. Tolkien also had a police sergeant called Boffin in his children's tale Mr. Bliss (written around 1932, published 1982), but he is said to have derived the name from an Oxford family of bakers and confectioners rather than Dickens (as confirmed by his daughter Priscilla Tolkien). He later used Boffin as a surname for a family in The Hobbit (1937). This family provides the main heroes, who meet Dickens' mould and are also small, like Sarah Biffen.
The Oxford English Dictionary quotes use in The Times in September 1945 based on a Ministry of Aircraft Production press release:
1945 Times 15 Sept. 5/4 A band of scientific men who performed their wartime wonders at Malvern and apparently called themselves "the boffins".
Malvern was home to both the Telecommunications Research Establishment (TRE) and the Radar Research and Development Establishment (RRDE), who were later merged into the Radar Research Establishment (RRE). It developed RADAR in support of all the services. The then superintendent of TRE, A.P. Rowe used the term 'boffin' to refer to earlier R.A.F. usage and by 1942 an RAF training film (School for Secrets) cited 'boffin' as armed-forces slang for an RAF technician or research scientist. 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 ...".
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Boffin AI simulator
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Boffin
Boffin is a British slang term for a scientist, engineer, or other person engaged in technical or scientific research and development. A "boffin" was viewed by some in the regular military or government services as odd, quirky or peculiar, though quite bright and essential to helping in the war effort through having and developing the key ideas leading to transformative military capabilities.
The origins and etymology of boffin are obscure. A link to the mathematician and evolutionary theorist Buffon has been proposed. Alternatively, linguist Eric Partridge proposed the term derived from Nicodemus Boffin, the good-hearted 'golden dustman' character who appears in the novel Our Mutual Friend (1864/5) by Charles Dickens, described there as a "very odd-looking old fellow indeed". In the novel, Mr Boffin pursues a late-life education, employing Silas Wegg to teach him to read.
William Morris also has a man called Boffin, based on Charles Dickens and said to be a variant of 'Biffin', meet the newly arrived time traveller in his novel News from Nowhere (1890). Dickens had referred to a 'Miss Biffins', an artist with only vestigial arms and legs, in Martin Chuzzlewit (1843). Thus at this time a 'Boffin' is a good-hearted person who has suffered from 'hard times', been ill-regarded, taken an opportunity to better themselves and done well, demonstrating remarkable social mobility. Possibly ill-favoured in appearance, possibly artistic.
In 1894 Augustine Birrell invented a fictional character – Rev. Boffin B.A. – to epitomize those who bothered fellow Liberal politician Sir Frank Lockwood with seeming trifles. Sir Frank turned the joke on Birrell by writing letters to the papers and critical of him as if from Boffin, later published a popular book of cartoons on the affair and was only then identified as the author, as described in Birrell's humorous biography of Sir Frank.
J. R. R. Tolkien also had a police sergeant called Boffin in his children's tale Mr. Bliss (written around 1932, published 1982), but he is said to have derived the name from an Oxford family of bakers and confectioners rather than Dickens (as confirmed by his daughter Priscilla Tolkien). He later used Boffin as a surname for a family in The Hobbit (1937). This family provides the main heroes, who meet Dickens' mould and are also small, like Sarah Biffen.
The Oxford English Dictionary quotes use in The Times in September 1945 based on a Ministry of Aircraft Production press release:
1945 Times 15 Sept. 5/4 A band of scientific men who performed their wartime wonders at Malvern and apparently called themselves "the boffins".
Malvern was home to both the Telecommunications Research Establishment (TRE) and the Radar Research and Development Establishment (RRDE), who were later merged into the Radar Research Establishment (RRE). It developed RADAR in support of all the services. The then superintendent of TRE, A.P. Rowe used the term 'boffin' to refer to earlier R.A.F. usage and by 1942 an RAF training film (School for Secrets) cited 'boffin' as armed-forces slang for an RAF technician or research scientist. 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 ...".