From tinkering on the fringes to Nobel glory

Sean O'Neill, contributor

Andre Geim receives the Nobel Prize from Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf (Image: Sipa Press/Rex Features)

Andre Geim shared the Nobel prize in physics in 2010 for his co-discovery of graphene. He is director of the Manchester Centre for Mesoscience & Nanotechnology at the University of Manchester

What makes a good day for you?

There are two things. The first is a good result, one which you sort of expected but that never previously came through. A really great result is always unexpected, and you never believe it. But there is this second-tier result, where you have a marginal expectation and something happens and you feel lucky. The second is when you get a journal paper accepted. It's always a fight. Even our Nobel-acknowledged paper needed significant changes before it was accepted.

Winning a Nobel prize has been known to interrupt the winner's work. How has it affected yours?

Actually, before the Nobel prize I accumulated such inertia that I managed to go through the "prize barrier" relatively unscathed. Our work continues because it is a very hot area. It's very unusual for a Nobel to be given for something which continues to be incredibly hot. One of my colleagues said that when he heard the announcement, he thought to himself: "Oh good, now they'll leave this area for me." Then he saw another of our papers published, and thought: "damn, they're still working on it!"

Geim's levatating frog (Image: Sipa Press/Rex Features)

Besides the Nobel, what else has shaped your career?

I believe a turning point was my first visit to the University of Nottingham in 1990. I was 32. Before that I was tinkering on the fringes of scientific discovery in Russia and felt like I was destined to stay there, whatever I tried. During this first experience at a western lab, with such resources suddenly at my disposal, I realised that I could be in the very thick of research action and that, despite my limited publication record, I was well trained to contribute. There was no going back.

You have worked in many countries. How does the UK compare?

I spent four years in the UK from 1990, before returning in 2000. I like it because it's a very natural environment. I found the US, the Netherlands and practically everywhere else I have worked a bit artificial and occasionally even hypocritical. There's an expectation that you have to smile and behave in a certain manner. Despite the differences between Russia, where I was born, and the UK, there is some common sense of humour. British humour - natural and self-deprecating - is very appealing to me.

You won an Ig Nobel award in 2000 for demonstrating an unusual magnetic effect using a levitating frog. Did you know it would generate such a buzz?

It was always the intention. We wanted to get the message across that everything around us is magnetic and needed to find an image with general appeal. We considered putting spiders, lizards, cockroaches and hamsters into the field. A hamster would have done nicely, but the hole into the apparatus was too small, so we ended up with a tiny frog we found in the biology department.

Source: http://feeds.newscientist.com/c/749/f/10897/s/1bfeb38f/l/0L0Snewscientist0N0Cblogs0Cbigwideworld0C20A120C0A10Cfrom0Etinkering0Eon0Ethe0Efringes0Eto0Enobel0Eglory0Bhtml0DDCMP0FOTC0Erss0Gnsref0Fonline0Enews/story01.htm

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