Nobel Prize for Dutch physicist
The Dutch physicist Andre Geim has been awarded a Nobel Prize for the invention of graphene, the world's thinnest and strongest material which is used in electronics. He shares the prize with his Russian-British colleague Konstantin Novoselov.
Graphene is a form of carbon with a two-dimensional crystal structure which is 200 times more resistant to fracture than steel.
Andre Geim was born in Russia and lives in England, but is a Dutch citizen and associate professor at the Radboud University of Nijmegen.
Professor Geim is also famed for the development of a biomimetic adhesive commonly known as "gecko tape".
In 2000 he won an Ig Nobel Prize, a parody of the Nobel Prize awarded for trivial and humorous scientific achievements, for an experiment in which he levitated a frog using extremely strong magnets. The following year he credited a hamster as co-author of a scientific paper about diamegnetism.
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