Very smart people. Usually, and lets be honest, a bit freaky. Generally harmless enough but to look at you'd think: keep away from my children. In addition to being brainier than everyone else boffins can usually be identified at a distance by a number of distinguishing physical features:

• A beard - not of the neatly trimmed or vaguely stylish variety but of the big, bushy, 3 week old food trapped within variety
• A large cranium to house the enormous brain (see picture on right)
• Spectacles that appear to have been designed on the very day spectacles were invented
• Dress sense: none what so ever. Expect to see trousers disappearing up the bum crack and a jacket that your local hobo wouldn't be seen dead in.
• A spindly stick man body. It is a common misconception that boffins are overweight from too much thinking and not enough exercise. And while it is true that boffins shy away from physical exertion (after all why exert yourself when you keep an atomically powered exoskeleton in your garage) they require phenomenal amounts of energy to sustain there thinking. So much so that some boffins directly harness the power of the sun itself during intense problem solving.