Andre Konstantinovich Geim
active c. 1958, Sochi, Soviet Union
Russian-born Dutch physicist, co-discoverer of graphene — a crystalline sheet one atom thick.
Geim is known both for playful experiments (levitating a frog in a magnet — Ig Nobel 2000) and top-tier science. In 2004 at Manchester, he and Konstantin Novoselov peeled graphite with adhesive tape down to a single layer of carbon atoms: graphene. Measurements showed electrons in graphene move like massless Dirac particles.
Nobel-winning work
The 2004 paper by Geim and Novoselov introduced graphene and the surprisingly simple 'scotch-tape' exfoliation method. In graphene, electrons mimic massless Dirac fermions, showing an anomalous quantum Hall effect even at room temperature. The result launched an entire field of 2D materials — thousands of papers and expected applications from electronics to energy.
Workplaces: University of Manchester
Netherlands, United Kingdom