Innovation Blog

Nobel Physics Prize for Pencils & Tape..& Hutzpah

  This year’s Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to two Russian physicists,  both at U. of Manchester,  Andre Geim (Dutch citizen, born in Sochi, Russia) and Konstantin Novoselov (British and Russian citizen, born in Nizhny Tagil, Russia).  The award is for their discovery of graphene, a carbon material that forms a lattice only one atom thick and useful for a wide variety of applications in  electronics and semiconductors.     

Graphene is a form of carbon. As a material it is completely new – not only the thinnest ever but also the strongest. As a conductor of electricity it performs as well as copper. As a conductor of heat it outperforms all other known materials. It is almost completely transparent, yet so dense that not even helium, the smallest gas atom, can pass through it. Carbon, the basis of all known life on earth, has surprised us once again.

According to published sources, “Geim and Novoselov extracted the graphene from a piece of graphite such as is found in ordinary pencils. Using regular adhesive tape they managed to obtain a flake of carbon with a thickness of just one atom. This at a time when many believed it was impossible for such thin crystalline materials to be stable.”

   Pencils?  Adhesive tape?  And a Nobel Prize, just for daring to do what everyone said could not be done, in a way everyone said would never work, by researchers who possess what in Yiddish and Hebrew is called “hutzpah”,  brash bold impudence.

    According to the Nobel Committee, 

   Since it is practically transparent and a good conductor, graphene is suitable for producing transparent touch screens, light panels, and maybe even solar cells.  When mixed into plastics, graphene can turn them into conductors of electricity while making them more heat resistant and mechanically robust. This resilience can be utilised in new super strong materials, which are also thin, elastic and lightweight. In the future, satellites, airplanes, and cars could be manufactured out of the new composite materials.

    Geim is 51 years old, young for a Nobelist  (this year’s Laureate in Physiology or Medicine is Robert Edwards, who developed in vitro fertilization decades ago).  But his colleague, Novoselov, is only 36, one of the youngest Nobelists ever.

   There seems to be a trend in the Nobel Prizes (expect announcements in the next week in Chemistry, Literature, Peace, and, deservedly last, Economics) to award prizes for scientists whose discoveries have led to life-changing technologies.  Last year, the Nobel in Physics went to scholars whose research led to fiber-optics and for an imaging semiconductor circuit, CCD sensors.