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Nobel laureate Andre Geim. (Courtesy: University of Manchester)
By Hamish Johnston
I thoroughly enjoyed a recent BBC Radio 4 profile of Andre Geim of the University of Manchester, who shared the 2010 Nobel Prize for Physics. In the 13 minute broadcast, which is available for download, Geim and several admirers talk about the passion for doing quirky fundamental research that led to his co-discovery of graphene.
There is even the bold suggestion from one of Geim’s colleagues that there might be another Nobel in the Russian-born physicist.
The fundamental scientific resarch quite often has something unexpected about the outcome:
1.Fermi discovered the themal neutrons – the basis for the operation of the nuclear reactors, just by replacing a “lead piece” by a “wax one’ before a neutron source just out of desperation due to the inconsistency of the results on neutron capture . He considered it to be his finest discovery!
2. The CMB radiation, the basic element for the understanding of the structure and dynamics of the ubniverse, was first treated as an undesired nuisance by the researchers concened.
3. Geim and his colleagues, just managed to scrape off with a sticky tape a layer from a carbon block that turned out to be the 2D graphene with unique electronic properties due to its Dirac point, that renders the electrons massless quasiparticles.
What is needed is a balanced appreciation of the things discovered and the persons involved.