'biophysicist' originates from modern English, formed from 'biophysics' + the agentive suffix '-ist', where the prefix 'bio-' comes from Greek 'bios' meaning 'life' and 'physics' comes from Greek 'physis' meaning 'nature' (used for the physical sciences); '-ist' denotes 'one who practices or is concerned with'.

'biophysicist' developed by attaching the suffix '-ist' to 'biophysics' (a term that emerged as a name for the interdisciplinary field in the late 19th to early 20th century), yielding a word for a practitioner: 'biophysicist'.

Initially it designated someone who applies physical methods to study living systems; over time the core meaning has remained stable, now covering a range of specialists applying physics, quantitative methods, and physical instrumentation to biological problems.