Physicist to land awkwardly (6)
I believe the answer is:
dalton
'physicist' is the definition.
(Dalton is an example)
'to land awkwardly' is the wordplay.
'awkwardly' indicates anagramming the letters.
'to'+'land'='toland'
'toland' is an anagram of 'DALTON'.
(Other definitions for dalton that I've seen before include "[LAWMAKER] ?" , "English scientist" , "John -, chemist who proposed theory of atoms" , "John --, English chemist and physicist" .)