(Symposium Y, "Functional Two-Dimensional Layered Material...)
Symposium Y, "Functional Two-Dimensional Layered Materials," held at the 2011 MRS Spring Meeting in San Francisco, California, April 25-29, was the first MRS symposium to focus on graphene, topological insulator thin films, and other 2D and quasi-2D materials together, aiming to highlight breakthroughs, progress, and challenges in the synthesis, processing, structure, and assembly of 2D layered materials, and how these factors affect their properties and applications.
(Since its discovery in 2004, graphene has been a great se...)
Since its discovery in 2004, graphene has been a great sensation due to its unique structure and unusual properties, and it has only taken 6 years for a Noble Prize to be awarded for the field of graphene research. This monograph gives a well-balanced overview of all areas of scientific interest surrounding this fascinating nanocarbon. In one handy volume, it offers comprehensive coverage of the topic, including chemical, materials science, nanoscience, physics, engineering, life science, and potential applications.
Andre Geim is a Dutch-British physicist who was awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize for Physics for his experiments with graphene. He shared the prize with his colleague and former student Konstantin Novoselov.
Background
Ethnicity:
Andre Geim was born to a family with German heritage.
Andre Geim was born on October 21, 1958, in Sochi, Krasnodar, Russian Federation in a family of engineers of German parentage (the only exclusion known to Geim was his maternal great-great-grandmother, who was Jewish). Geim considers himself as a European and does not require more detail "taxonomy." In 1964, his family moved to Nalchik.
Father, Konstantin Geim (1910-1998), held the chief engineer’s position of Nalchik Electrovacuum Plant since 1964; mother, Nina Beier (born in 1927), worked at the same plant as Chief technologist. Mother’s paternal half-brother was the well-known theoretical physicist Vladimir Beier, son of Nikolay Beier, who was Andre Geim’s grandfather.
Education
In 1975, Andre Geim graduated from Nalchik intermediate school 3 with Gold Medal for Academic Excellence and tried to get into MEPhI, but unsuccessfully (applicant’s German parentage was an obstruction). After coming back to Nalchik, he worked for 8 months at Nalchik Electrovacuum Plant. During this period, he learned V. Petrosian and intensely studied physics with the latter’s assistance. In 1976, he was enrolled in Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology.
Till 1982, he was a student of General and Applied Physic Department and graduated it magna cum laude (four in diploma for socialism political economics only) and entered a Ph.D. program. In 1987, he gained a degree of Candidate of Physical and Mathematical Sciences in the Institute for Solid State Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Andre Geim worked as a research scientist for ISSP of Academy of Sciences of the USSR and in the Institute of Microtechnology Issues of Academy of Sciences of the USSR.
In 1990, he took a scholarship from the English Royal Society and left the Soviet Union. He worked for the University of Nottingham, the University of Bath, and shortly - for the University of Copenhagen, before he became an assistant professor of the University of Nijmegen, and then, from 2001 - of the University of Manchester. Nowadays he is a head of Manchester Mesoscience and Nanotechnologies Center as well as head of the condensed matter physics department.
Geim is a Doctor of Humane Letters of Delft Technical University, Eidgnoessiche Technische Hochschule of Zurich, and the University of Antwerp. He has granted a Langworthy Professor title of the University of Manchester (this title was given to Earnest Rutherford, Lawrence Bragg, and Patrick Blackett).
In 2008, he was proposed to head one of Max Planks Institutes in Germany but refused.
On 31 December 2011, according to the ordinance of queen Elizabeth II, for his merit for the science, he was awarded a title of knight bachelor, with an official right to add the title Sir to his name.
(Since its discovery in 2004, graphene has been a great se...)
2013
Politics
Andre Geim thinks the international community should reconsider its approach to Vladimir Putin, who remains "extremely popular" among Russian people.
"This is the same mistake we are making in Iran, Afghanistan, and Syria most lately because we try to project our own mentality, being born and bred in democracy with our humanitarian values, into people who were born and bred under completely different circumstances. That is the reason for many, many tragic events including this civil war [with Ukraine], Isis and so on." - he said.
Views
Among Geim’s achievements, shall be mentioned the creation of a biometrical adhesive (glue), which later became known as gecko tape.
Besides, his experiment with diamagnetic levitation is well known, including the famous "flying frog." For this experiment, Geim, together with the known mathematician and theorist Sir Michael Berry from the University of Bristol, won the Nobel prize in 2000.
In 2004, Andre Geim together with his student Konstantin Novoselov has invented production technology for graphene, a new material, composed of a monatomic carbon layer. As further experiments have shown, graphene has a number of unique features: he has increased strength, conducts electricity as well as copper, and exceeds all known materials in its thermal conductivity; graphene is transparent for the light but simultaneously solid enough not to let pass even helium molecules, which are the smallest existing molecules. All these features make it an advanced material for different applications, particularly for the production of touchscreens, light panels, and, possibly, solar batteries.
Quotations:
"Human progress has always been driven by a sense of adventure and unconventional thinking."
"Some people would call me a workaholic. I don't consider this time: I just love my work so much, so it's my real hobby, OK? And, yeah, getting some play during working hours for which you are paid is the best job I can recommend for anyone around!"
"Many of my colleagues are not able to run their family budget. On the other hand, I look at some of the apparatchiks in research councils, and I have even less trust in their abilities. Good intentions have always paved the road to hell."
"Better to be wrong than be boring."
"When people are thinking, we are quite inventive animals."
"The consequences of a lack of new knowledge is decades of stagnation: the next generation will be poorer than this one."
Membership
Royal Society
,
United Kingdom
Personality
In 2000 Andre Geim and Michael Berry got an Ig Nobel Prize for the frog experiment with magnets. After receiving both Ig Nobel Prize and Nobel Prize, he said: "Frankly, I value both my Ig Nobel prize and Nobel prize at the same level and for me, Ig Nobel prize was the manifestation that I can take jokes, a little bit of self-deprecation always helps."
H.A.M.S. ter Tisha, his favorite hamster, was named a co-author in a 2001 research paper by him.
Once he said: "My mother’s grandmother was Jewish. I suffered from anti-Semitism in Russia because my name sounds Jewish, so I identify with you. Nonetheless, I don’t divide the world by religions or countries, but by stupid people and slightly less stupid people, and I hope that I am numbered among the second group. Israel has several cultural characteristics which result in an especially high proportion of the less-stupid people."
Geim expects still to be working at the age of 75. “Someone has to take a stone and throw it into the bog and see what the waves will be," he said. "You get some splashes of dirt on yourself, but I can cope with this."
He is serious about play, enjoying stressful hikes across Borneo, and an eventful trip to the Grand Canyon, where he endured both pneumonia and a rattlesnake bite. Equally, he is playful about the serious business of work. "I measure life not in years but in experiences."
Interests
travel
Sport & Clubs
rafting
Music & Bands
Édith Piaf, Johann Sebastian Bach, Pink Floyd, Gioachino Rossini
Connections
Andre Gaim met Irina Grigorieva in Chernogolovka, a science city on the outskirts of Moscow, and married her in 1988. The couple has a daughter Alexandra.