Friends, bringing to you yet another story of the life of another famous physicist who was the winner of Nobel Prize in the year 2010 for his groundbreaking experiments on the two-dimensional material graphene. Yes, I am talking about Dr. Andre Geim.
Along with Konstantin Novoselov, Andre Geim could produce only one atom thick long sheet made up of hexagonal carbon lattice for the first time and named it as “Graphene”. Before this invention, a material of this nature was only considered as theoretical possibility. Graphene is very thin but still incredibly strong, good heat and electrical conductivity, almost entirely transparent, yet very dense and bears immense potential for its industrial usage.
Dr. Geim was born in October 21, 1958 in Sochi, Russia, to a family with German roots. He was the second child of his parents. His father was also a physicist. Andre spent his early childhood in Sochi, with his grandparents and at the age of seven, moved with his parents to city of Nalchik. His parents were working in Nalchik and he started schooling in this small soviet city with his brother. At school, Andre was a very good student. At the age of 16, he graduated from school with a gold medal. He could get very good marks in all science subjects, viz. Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics. Andre wanted to pursue further studies in Maths but his parents were of the opinion that a career in pure Maths may not be a good choice at that time and encouraged him to go for Physics in one of the top universities in Russia. The Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (Phystech) was the most prestigious university to study physics in Russia at that time; however, considering very tough competition and the level of the entrance examination, Andre decided not to try for this and settled to go for the second in the list, Moscow Engineering and Physics Institute (MIFI). He did very well in the written entrance test of MIFI but could not get through the oral examination and decided to take a year break and to re-appear in the next year. This time, he did very well both in written and oral but was not allotted a seat in MIFI, which he sadly attributed to his German descendence, which according to him, in the then Soviet Union was a discriminating factor. He also mentioned how his father, a university teacher was placed in camps by the then Soviet government for his roots. He was not happy about the way things were going on regarding his admission to a good university and he lost two years. So, in the third year, he decided to try for the topmost university, Phystech. He could go through both written and oral examination and was unexpectedly got a seat in Phystech.
He remembered his days in Phystech as a young undergraduate student of Physics and goes on mentioning in his autobiography, how hectic and laborious the initial two years were. The tremendous pressure of courses and examination was so high that some of the students developed psychological issues including suicidal tendency and drop-outs were also not uncommon in Phystech. Andre mentioned that this is where he along with some of his friends consumed alcohol after the examination to get rid of the work-related pressure. Andre Geim’s journey with Physics in the university went on smooth and later he got his Ph.D. from Institute of Microelectronics Technology, Moscow. His work on material physics was recognized by the world and was awarded with the Nobel Prize in Physics in the year 2010 for his work on graphene paper.
Source: www.nobelprize.org
