Andre Geim
Facts
© The Nobel Foundation. Photo: U. Montan
Andre Geim
The Nobel Prize in Physics 2010
Born: 21 October 1958, Sochi, Russia
Affiliation at the time of the award: University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom
Prize motivation: “for groundbreaking experiments regarding the two-dimensional material graphene”
Prize share: 1/2
Life
Andre Geim was born in Sotji, Russia, to a family with German heritage. He spent the first seven years of his life living with his maternal grandparents. It was not until later that Geim discovered that both his paternal grandfather and his father, who were physicists, had spent several years imprisoned in labor camps. Since receiving his PhD in physics from the Russian Academy of Sciences in Chernogolovka, Geim has worked at several European universities, including in Nijmegen, Netherlands. Geim has held a position at the University of Manchester in the UK since 2001. He is married with children.
Work
Carbon exists in several different natural forms. A material consisting of carbon atoms arranged in a hexagonal lattice and only one atom thick was long considered a purely theoretical construction. In 2004 Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov successfully produced this material, graphene, and mapped its properties: incredibly thin but still incredibly strong, good heat and electrical conductivity, almost entirely transparent yet very dense. Graphene creates new possibilities within materials technology and electronics.
Nobel Prizes and laureates
Six prizes were awarded for achievements that have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind. The 12 laureates' work and discoveries range from proteins' structures and machine learning to fighting for a world free of nuclear weapons.
See them all presented here.
