Andre Geim

Sir Andre Geim

Sir Andre Konstantin Geim, FRS (Russian: Андрей Константинович Гейм; born 21 October 1958) is a

Russian-born British-Dutch physicist working at the University of Manchester.[7] Geim was awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics jointly with Konstantin Novoselov for his work on graphene.[8][9] He is the Langworthy Professor

and director of the Manchester Centre for Mesoscience and Nanotechnology at the University of Manchester.

Early years

Andre Geim was born to Konstantin Alekseyevich Geim and Nina Nikolayevna Bayer on 21 October 1958. Both his parents were Russian German engineers.[10] Geim has stated, "My mother's grandmother was Jewish. I suffered from anti-Semitism in Russia because my name sounds Jewish".[11] Geim has one brother, Vladislav. In 1965, the family

moved to Nalchik,[12] where he studied at an English-language high school.[12] After graduation, he applied to the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute.[13] He took the entrance exams twice, but was not accepted.[12][14] He then

applied to the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT), where he was accepted. He said the students had to work extremely hard: "The pressure to work and to study was so intense that it was not a rare thing for people to break and leave, and some of them ended up with everything from schizophrenia to depression to suicide." He

received an MSc degree in 1982, and in 1987 obtained a PhD degree in metal physics from the Institute of Solid State Physics (ISSP) at the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) in Chernogolovka.[15][16] 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.[15]

Academic career

After earning his PhD, 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 have to deal with politics, and determined to leave Russia.[17]

He obtained his first tenured position in 1994, when he was appointed associate professor at Radboud University Nijmegen, where he did work on mesoscopic superconductivity.[18] 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: “He was offered professorships at Nijmegen and Eindhoven, but turned them down as he found the Dutch academic system too hierarchical and full of petty politicking. “This can be pretty unpleasant at times,” he says. “It’s not like the British system where every staff member is an equal quantity.””[17] On the other hand, Geim writes in his Nobel

lecture that "In addition, the situation was a bit surreal because outside the university walls I received a warm-hearted welcome from everyone around, including Jan Kees and other academics." [19] (Dr. Jan Kees Maan

was the research boss of Geim during his time in Radboud University Nijmegen).

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, and Langworthy Professor in 2007.[16] Geim's wife and long-standing co-author, Irina Grigorieva, also moved to Manchester as a lecturer. Later they were joined by Novoselov.[12] Since 2007 he has been an EPSRC Senior Research Fellow.[16] In 2010 Radboud University Nijmegen appointed him professor of innovative materials and nanoscience.[20]

development of flexible touchscreens, and that he has not patented the material because he would need a specific application and an industrial partner.[28]