pathologist

/pəˈθɑlədʒɪst/

/pəˈθɒlədʒɪst/

Other forms: pathologists

A student who is fascinated with the causes of disease and death might decide to go to medical school and become a pathologist.

A medical doctor who performs autopsies to learn how patients died is a pathologist. Other pathologists trace illness back to their root causes, or diagnose diseases such as cancer. When a doctor decides to to become a pathologist, her field is called "pathology." The Greek root of both words is pathologikos, "treating of disease," which combines pathos, "suffering," with logia, "study, or the study of."

Definitions of pathologist

1. noun

   a doctor who specializes in medical diagnosis
   synonyms: diagnostician

   examples:

   Sir Howard Walter Florey

   British pathologist who isolated and purified penicillin, which had been discovered in 1928 by Sir Alexander Fleming (1898-1968)

   Karl Landsteiner

   United States pathologist (born in Austria) who discovered human blood groups (1868-1943)

   Sir James Paget

   English pathologist who discovered the cause of trichinosis (1814-1899)

   Francis Peyton Rous

   United States pathologist who discovered viruses that cause tumors (1879-1970)

   Rudolf Karl Virchow

   German pathologist who recognized that all cells come from cells by binary fission and who emphasized cellular abnormalities in disease (1821-1902)

   types:

   aetiologist, etiologist

   a specialist in the etiology of diseases

   type of:

   medical specialist, specialist

   someone who practices one branch of medicine