Andre Geim bows after receiving the in Physics from Swedish King Carl Dec A man of XVI Gustaf, 10th December 2010 Wed 12th North Korea successfully launches a long-range rocket which puts a satellite into orbit. The US and Japan criticise the action as a cover for long-range missile testing. substance “I bless all of you from my heart” On 10th December 2010, Andre Geim Pope Benedict XVI sends out Mon 10th his frst message through was jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Twitter. The pontiff will be tweeting in eight languages Physics for discovering the first ever 2D crystal, through different accounts. . Two years later, as graphene is being A Panamanian woman is arrested at Barcelona’s El Prat touted as the most important new material for airport for attempting to smuggle cocaine from a generation, he speaks to Alexandra O’Brien Colombia to Spain inside her breast implants. about how the prize has changed him and how The implants contained a combined total of 1.3kg his discovery is set to change the world of the drug, with a street value of £80,000.

Thu 13th wo scientists walk the same opinion. You see what we A pre-inquest legal review in the into a bar,” I tell have done to the planet. How we UK is told by the counsel of Nobel Laureate destroy everything. When I hear Alexander Litvinenko’s widow Sir Andre Geim. anything about global warming, Marina that Litvinenko was a paid agent of MI6. The “One says, I’ll have especially when politicians or other a glass of H O. The other one says, I’ll scientists are raising questions Russian dissident and former “T2 KGB spy was poisoned with have a glass of H2O too. The barman about global warming I switch TV polonium-120 and died in hands over the drinks. They knock channels... For god’s sake, there is London in 2006. them back. The second scientist keels global warming and yes, it is caused A session of Ukraine’s new over and dies.” by humans.” He sighs. “It really gets parliament ends in a mass brawl. The father of graphene meets my on my nerves how stupid we remain MPs get into a fst fght after icebreaker with a bemused face and as a race.” the opposition tries to physically block the announcement of a a raised eyebrow. “Ah,” he says, after His disdain for idiocy is not vote for the speaker of president a long pause during which I feel my limited to mankind. “I am not a big fan Viktor Yanukovych’s ruling party. toes start to curl. “It’s a chemistry of the orang-utan,” he deadpans at one The opposition claims the joke. Not a physics joke, but yeah... point in our interview after I mention ruling party is breaking my love of the animal and a personal parliamentary rules. Very good.” I’d tried out my favourite hydrogen pilgrimage to see them in Borneo. Julian Assange announces peroxide gag because Sir Andre Geim “It is a stupid animal. It looks nice that he plans to run for is notorious for his sense of humour. but it’s not very smart. Chimpanzees the Australian senate in 2013 elections. The Wikileaks founder This is, after all, a scientist who named are really what I recommend. That’s has refused to leave Ecuador’s his hamster, H.A.M.S. ter Tisha, as our close relative. They are bloody London embassy since June. co-author in one of his papers and smart, okay.” The UK government removes who won an Ig Nobel prize for making Geim himself is indisputably restrictions on fracking for a frog fly. bloody smart, okay. In his autobiog- shale gas. Exploratory wells That said, Geim is not one to raphy for the Nobel Prize, he recounts were closed last year after two suffer fools gladly. “I often repeat how, as a young man, he was asked in minor earthquakes: UK energy the phrase: ‘I like individual humans an oral exam to estimate the weight of and climate secretary Ed Davey says new seismic controls will but I hate the human race,’” he says. the earth’s atmosphere. He stunned be introduced. “If you think, you probably share his examiners by giving an exact Henrik Montgomery/AP/Press Association Images figure in trillions of kilograms, which “Graphene,” says Geim, “was in is going to be a disruptive technology. to nationality [but] with reference to he had calculated in his head in three front of our eyes and under our noses. Early predictions back up his view, style,” he says. “It’s people who are put minutes. “I was incredibly smart at Draw a pencil line and it’s in there. with the estimating on the rails like a train by their super- the age of 20,” he says. “I wish I had You don’t need to go to university, that by 2022 the graphene industry visor and they continue doing all the remained that smart. Many people you just need a reasonably good will be worth £300 billion. same stuf from their scientific cradles Dec stay smarter than I am but it’s a lot of microscope to see it in your pencil With so much power behind a to their scientific cofns. They all go work, and life in science is a marathon, trace.” He compares the break- material I wonder what the negative along the same straight rail line – not Fri 14th it’s not a 100-metre race.” through to the discovery of planets. implications could be, and ask a British rail line, but a straight rail Adam Lanza kills 26 people Geim’s first step in his “Wandering stars had been known to Professor Geim if graphene could line like in . I know plenty of at Sandy Hook Elementary in scientific marathon took him from his the Greeks for thousands of years,” he ever be misused. I mention fictional Russians and British who do exactly Newtown, Connecticut. The birthplace, in the small Black Sea tells me. “They called them ‘Planetas’ scientists such as Frankenstein, but am the same thing without trying to 20-year-old killed his mother resort of , to the Moscow Institute – which is where the word ‘planets’ really thinking about what happened move sideways because it’s dangerous, before setting off for the school, and later killed himself. of Physics and Technology (Phystech) comes from, but it took Copernicus to when the atomic bomb was developed. because it’s not what our instincts tell ‘Seventeen days in a gun culture’ in the 1970s. I ask him what the put the meaning into the word.” Does he feel a sense of responsibility us... When you move from place to Fri 21st atmosphere was like. “It was for whatever happens with graphene? place you learn diferent things and In Chengping in the Henan totalitarian,” he replies. “It was a The wonder material “Everything has the potential this [gives you] pieces for your Lego province of China, a man great school in terms of physics to cause a disaster,” he says. “For game. The more pieces you have, injures 22 children and one but... it was too tough. Some people Professor Andre Geim, left, and Geim’s 2D discovery is garlanded example, we know nuclear power has the more complex the structures you adult with a knife outside a went crazy. Some kids were suicidal. fellow Nobel prize-winner with superlatives. It is the strongest the potential to cause a big disaster. It’s can make.” primary school. Min Yongjun, 36, Dr The ‘2D’ There was a lot of physiological material known to science, 300 times not science but our use of science that After years of moving around is arrested at the scene. It is atomic structure of Graphene later reported that he had been pressure [which caused] psychiatric stronger than steel. It would take an causes the disaster. We can’t blame collecting metaphorical Lego pieces, strongly infuenced by rumours problems.” In his autobiography he elephant balanced on a pencil to break science for making things wrong. Geim now seems happy in his adopted of an approaching Doomsday on says that his own sanity “was perhaps through a single sheet of graphene as In the case of graphene, it’s in every country of Britain. “This is probably 21st December. saved by the amount of alcohol that thin as cling film. It is harder than pencil trace. If I know of any danger of the only nation I know out of the many Wlodzimierz Umaniec, who I and some of my friends consumed diamond. It is also the lightest known a pencil, I guess, then it’s a very sharp where I have lived where people have defaced a Mark Rothko painting after each exam to release the material. And there’s more: it’s flexible, pencil and you sit on it.” very similar self deprecation to what at the Tate Modern, is accumulated stress.” almost transparent, superconductive Geim seems happy to share his I learned during my university years, sentenced to two years in After Phystech, Geim had a brief knowledge of graphene with the which was characteristic to the Soviet prison. The 26-year Pole wrote (electricity flows through graphene on the painting with black paint stint at the much faster than copper or any other world. I ask him if he agrees with intelligentsia,” he tells me. “The kind to promote his own art before being appointed associate material) and allows nothing to pass 1965 physics laureate Richard of people who were living within the movement, ‘Yellowism’. professor at Radboud University through except for water. All this and Feynman who said of his own work Soviet system, who played according An emergency in the Netherlands. It was it’s only one thick. in quantum electrodynamics: “If I to the rules but at the same time saw inspection of the here that he started his ‘Friday night Graphene has a vast number could explain it to an average person how ridiculous and surreal things Japanese road experiments,” an opportunity to try of potential applications. As Geim I wouldn’t be worth the Nobel Prize.” sometimes are.” tunnel in out simple, fun pieces of research says, it’s “a very big patch of grass in “Ah yes,” says Geim, “but Einstein said I ask Geim about the changes the Sasago which Nobel Prize has made to his life in partially that aren’t directly related to his day which to put a lot of stakes”. We could the complete opposite: ‘You don’t collapsed in early December, job. The first experiment to show soon be seeing wafer-thin televisions, understand your physics if you can’t the last two years. His opinion carries killing nine, reveals defects at real promise involved using an equally slender mobile phones, and explain it to your grandma.’ That’s more weight now, he says. And he’s 670 points in the tunnel’s electromagnet to levitate a frog, an It would take touch screens that are bendable, the usual things with proverbs. They philosophical about the additional outbound lane. exercise which earned him huge allowing you to roll them up and contradict each other.” pressure he faces. “I managed to Sat 15th media coverage and an Ig Nobel prize an elephant take them out with you. Then there survive this Nobel ordeal relatively (stated aim: “to first make people balanced on a pencil is the possibility of longer-lasting Tilting at windmills unscathed,” he tells me. “But I know A group of Russian laugh, and then make them think”) to break through batteries which, for example, could many people who went crazy, who opposition leaders are in 2000. revolutionise the future of electric The only personal touches in Geim’s either decided that they are geniuses arrested at an anti-Putin a single sheet rally in Moscow. The He moved on to the University cars, making them more efficient office are a small printout of a or became complete megalomaniacs, demonstration is broken up by of in 2001, where he of graphene” and afordable to run. Graphene can levitating frog, pinned to a corkboard and others who started to work so police with a total of 40 arrests conducted Friday night experiments be used as an anti-corrosion coating behind his desk, and a large, framed hard to try to prove that they are made. The opposition leaders into gecko toes. A team of Californian on metals that is transparent, thinner print by Picasso. It’s a black and white geniuses they also went crazy. Many are released later in the day. next decade, and materials capable Nobel Prize laureates feel the pressure scientists had claimed that geckoes and longer lasting than anything sketch featuring Don Quixote and Sun 16th are able to climb walls because their of hanging flatscreen TVs from tiny, else on the market. It can also filter his sidekick Sancho Panza, in front to prove that it was not accidental. It’s toes are covered with billions of tiny ultra-adhesive squares look set to hit the salt out of seawater, offering a of a series of windmills (in the novel, quite an ordeal on your psyche. On The Syrian anti-government hairs which produce ‘Van der Waals’ the market soon. cheap and easy way to provide clean Don Quixote fights windmills that he the other hand, after some time you Al-Tawhid brigade seizes control of an army base intermolecular forces. In a 2003 proof- It was at Manchester, a year after drinking water. imagines to be giants). I ask Geim realise there is very little you can do. in Aleppo. of-concept study, Geim managed to the successful gecko experiment, The most lucrative prospect, what his windmills are, the enemies You still try your best. You just muddle produce a small patch of ‘gecko tape’ that Geim and his team succeeded however, is its potential to he will never beat. through life.” Syrian army planes attack the Palestinian refugee camp which operates on the same principles, in isolating a single layer of graphite, replace silicon in computer chips, He cites politicians, adminis- And with that the father of al-Yarmouk near Damascus, and demonstrated its stickiness by which he named “graphene”, through making them smaller and more trators and “the typical academic”. gecko tape, flying frogs and a killing at least eight people. hanging a Spiderman model from experiments which included using compact, and providing for faster, I ask him what constitutes a typical £300 billion new industry takes his the lab roof. Similar experiments strips of Sellotape to gather samples leave. It is Friday night – and there are The death toll of Typhoon higher-performing computers. academic. “These days I call them Bopha in the Philippines took place across the world for the from pencil tips. Professor Geim believes that graphene Images Association SUPER/AP/Press JON ‘German professors’ without reference experiments to be done... passes 1,000.