Andre Geim

A quote from Geim was deliberately doctored by the campaign group Vote Leave in the run-up to the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum. An open letter about science, signed by 13 Conservative MPs including Boris Johnson, attempted to paint European science funding as unnecessarily bureaucratic and deliberately misrepresented Geim's views on Europe:

Geim also developed a biomimetic adhesive which became known as gecko tape—so called because it works on the same principle as adhesion of gecko feet—research of which is still in the early stages. It is hoped that the development will eventually allow humans to scale ceilings, like Spider-Man.

"Look at the people who give this Nobel prize. They are retired Norwegian politicians who have spent all their careers in a safe environment, in an oil-rich modern country. They try to extend their views of the world, how the world should work and how democracy works in another country. It's very, very patronising— they have not lived in these countries. In the past 10 years, China has developed not only economically, but even the strongest human rights supporter would agree also human rights have improved. Why do we need to distort this?"

In 2014, Geim's interview for Desert Island Discs, a popular BBC radio programme, revealed details of his personal life and taste in music.

Expanding the scope of his research adventures, Geim started studying low-dimensional water in 2012, after his Nobel-prize achievements. A part of this work was acknowledged by the 2018 International Creativity Prize for Water.

In 2011, Geim became a corresponding member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is Honorary Professor of Moscow Phys-Tech, Honorary Professor of the University of Nijmegen, Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Physics (HonFInstP), Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (HonFRSC), Honorary Fellow of Singapore Institute of Physics, Honorary Professor of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Geim was furthermore made a Knight Bachelor in the 2012 New Year Honours for services to science. He was elected a foreign associate of the US National Academy of Sciences in May 2012. He was awarded the Copley Medal in 2013 and the Carbon Medal in 2016.

Geim was awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics jointly with Konstantin Novoselov for his work on graphene. He is Regius Professor of Physics and Royal Society Research Professor at the National Graphene Institute. Sir Andre Geim had also been awarded an Ig Nobel Prize earlier in 2000 for levitating a frog using its intrinsic magnetism. He is the only individual, as of 2020, to have received both Nobel and Ig Nobel prizes.

He was awarded one of six Royal Society 2010 Anniversary Research Professorships. The Royal Society added its 2010 Hughes Medal "for his revolutionary discovery of graphene and elucidation of its remarkable properties". He was awarded honorary doctorates from Delft University of Technology, ETH Zürich, the University of Antwerp and the University of Manchester. In 2010, Geim was appointed as Knight Commander of the Order of the Netherlands Lion for his contribution to Dutch Science.

On 5 October 2010, Geim was awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics jointly with Novoselov "for groundbreaking experiments regarding the two-dimensional material graphene". Upon hearing of the award he said, "I'm fine, I slept well. I didn't expect the Nobel Prize this year", and that his plans for the day would not change. The lecture for the award took place on 8 December 2010 at Stockholm University. He said he hopes that graphene and other two-dimensional crystals will change everyday life as plastics did for humanity, although we need to wait for a few decades to see the results.

Geim was one of 38 Nobel laureates who signed a declaration in 2010 issued by Scholars for Peace in the Middle East condemning international attempts to boycott Israeli academics, institutions, and research centers.

At the Nobel Minds symposium in December 2010, Geim said the Nobel Peace Prize committee's choice of Chinese dissident, the imprisoned Liu Xiaobo, as winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, was patronising, saying

He shared the 2008 EPS Europhysics Prize with Novoselov "for discovering and isolating a single free-standing atomic layer of carbon (graphene) and elucidating its remarkable electronic properties". In 2009 he received the Körber European Science Award. The US National Academy of Sciences honoured him with the 2010 John J. Carty Award for the Advancement of Science "for his experimental realisation and investigation of graphene, the two-dimensional form of carbon".

In 2006 he appeared on the Scientific American 50. The Institute of Physics awarded him the 2007 Mott Medal and Prize "for his discovery of a new class of materials—free-standing two-dimensional crystals—in particular graphene". Geim was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2007. His certificate of election reads:

Geim's achievements include the discovery of a simple method for isolating single atomic layers of graphite, known as graphene, in collaboration with researchers at the University of Manchester and IMT. The team published their findings in October 2004 in Science.

In 2001 he became a professor of physics at the University of Manchester, and was appointed director of the Manchester Centre for Mesoscience and Nanotechnology in 2002. Geim's wife and long-standing co-author, Irina Grigorieva, also moved to Manchester as a lecturer in 2001. The same year, they were joined by Novoselov who moved to Manchester from Nijmegen, which awarded him a PhD in 2004. Geim served as Langworthy Professor between 2007 and 2013, leaving this endowed professorship to Novoselov in 2012. Also, between 2007 and 2010 Geim was an EPSRC Senior Research Fellow before becoming one of Royal Society Research Professors.

He named his favourite hamster, H.A.M.S. ter Tisha, co-author in a 2001 research paper.

Geim shared the 2000 Ig Nobel Prize in physics with Michael Berry for the frog experiment. He received it for using the magnetic properties of water scaling to levitate a small frog with magnets.

Geim's research in 1997 into the possible effects of magnetism on water scaling led to the famous discovery of direct diamagnetic levitation of water, and led to a frog being levitated. For this experiment, he and Michael Berry received the 2000 Ig Nobel Prize. "We were asked first whether we dared to accept this prize, and I take pride in our sense of humor and self-deprecation that we did".

He obtained his first tenured position in 1994, when he was appointed associate professor at Radboud University Nijmegen, where he worked on mesoscopic superconductivity. He later gained Dutch citizenship. One of his doctoral students at Nijmegen was Konstantin Novoselov, who went on to become his main research partner. However, Geim has said that he had an unpleasant time during his academic career in the Netherlands.

After earning his PhD with Victor Petrashov, Geim worked as a research scientist at the Institute for Microelectronics Technology (IMT) at RAS, and from 1990 as a post-doctoral fellow at the universities of Nottingham (twice), Bath, and Copenhagen. He said that while at Nottingham he could spend his time on research rather than "swimming through Soviet treacle," and determined to leave the Soviet Union.

He said that at the time he would not have chosen to study solid-state physics, preferring particle physics or astrophysics, but is now happy with his choice. He received a diplom (MSc degree equivalent) from MIPT in 1982 and a Candidate of Sciences (PhD equivalent) degree in metal physics in 1987 from the Institute of Solid State Physics (ISSP) at the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) in Chernogolovka.

In 1965, the family moved to Nalchik, where he studied at a high school. After graduation, he applied to the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute. He took the entrance exams twice, but attributes his failure to qualify to discrimination on account of his German ethnicity. He then applied to the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT), where he was accepted.

Sir Andre Konstantin Geim FRS, HonFRSC, HonFInstP (Russian: Андре́й Константи́нович Гейм ; born 21 October 1958) is a Russian-born Dutch-British physicist working in England in the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Manchester.

Andre Geim was born to Konstantin Alekseyevich Geim and Nina Nikolayevna Bayer in Sochi, Russia, on 21 October 1958. Both his parents were engineers of German origin. His grandfather N.N. Bayer (Mykola Baier in Ukrainian) was a notable public figure in Ukraine of the early 20th century, one of its first nature conservationists and the first rector of Kaminiets-Podilskyi University.