Prof. Andre Geim, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics last month, is still trying
to digest it. “I have little experience in this, so I researched what happened
to winners who preceded me,” he told
Globes during a recent visit to
Israel.
“Some of them became egomaniacs, while others drowned in hard
work in an effort to prove that the prize wasn’t given to them by mistake,” he
said. “I hope to fall somewhere between the extremes. I didn’t expect the prize
and I didn’t try to win it, but when I won it, I realized that it’s worth a lot
to people. I know that I’ve become a pretty face for good causes, and
that’s fine with me.”
Geim, 36, spoke at the International Nanotechnology
Conference and Exhibition in Tel Aviv, in which he participated.
As for
his decision to come to Israel, he said: “My mother’s grandmother was Jewish. I
suffered from anti- Semitism in Russia because my name sounds Jewish, so I
identify with you. Nonetheless, I don’t divide the world by religions or
countries, but by stupid people and slightly lessstupid people, and I hope that
I am numbered among the second group. Israel has several cultural
characteristics which result in an especially high proportion of the less-stupid
people.”
Globes: What can Israel do to keep this status? Geim: “Israel is
in an excellent position in terms of science. It is first or second in
the world in terms of leading scientists in their fields as a proportion of the
size of the population. In terms of applied science, I don’t believe that
another Intel will emerge here, or that Israel will create a company like
Boeing.
“On the other hand, the life sciences are more suited for a small
to mid-sized country because this is a relatively new science in terms of true
understanding of the mechanisms operating at its base. The main thing is not to
do what they did in Europe. The EU sank science under bureaucracy as part of
government support plans.”
What can be done against the brain drain? “You
won’t like my answer.
Science isn’t football, and a scientist isn’t a
player on a team, but a worker for all of humanity. The brain drain
shouldn’t be stopped, but free movement should be allowed.”
How can
teenagers be encouraged to pursue careers in science? “It begins with the
parents: whether they encourage unconventional thinking and unconventional
knowledge, or push the child to get rich. When I studied in the US, students
complained about my course, so I lowered the level and suddenly they all loved
me. Consumerbased education does not create excellence.”
You’ve worked in
several fields during your life. What would you tell a university researcher to
focus on? “It’s impossible to do worthwhile research in less than three to five
years. On the other hand, the current conditions in which a person gets a
post-doctorate topic and works on variations of it until retirement are
unacceptable. Funds that support science don’t like a researcher to change
fields, but it’s critical to achieve something interesting. It has to be done
during the night hours, kept hidden, on the basis of previous
grants.”
Geim is best known for his work on graphene, which are carbon
sheets one molecule thick that have incredible qualities of strength,
conductivity and transparency.
“Graphene can be used for effective and
cheap sequencing of the genome,” he told
Globes.
“It’s possible to read
the sequence of the DNA molecule by putting it through an electrical
field.
“Until now, no material could be found that could create the thin
gap between the two sides of the field that would let just one molecule get
through. Graphene makes this possible, and it will make it possible to determine
the genetic composition of each and every one of us for just $10 in less than a
decade. Then we’ll know what each of us will die of.”
“In
computing, there’s a lot of talk of graphene as a replacement for silicon, but
that’s in the distant future,” Geim said. “In the next few years, we’ll see
graphene as a component of touch screens, instead of rare and expensive
materials. It’s already possible to find graphene as a component in conductive
ink and in electron microscopes. Another interesting field is
communications. Graphene can make terahertz frequencies
tangible. Until now no one knew how to use them.”
Geim has also
won an IgNobel Prize for his work on using magnets to levitate a frog.