Novoselov Konstantin Sergeevich was born on August 23, 1974 in Nizhny Tagil (Sverdlovsk region). Father, Sergey Viktorovich, worked as an engineer at Uralvagonzavod, mother, Tatyana Glebovna, worked as an English teacher. Currently, parents live in Moscow.

He studied at the Nizhny Tagil school No. 39, the director of which was his grandfather Viktor Konstantinovich, and his mother taught at the same school. In the sixth grade, he took first place in the Sverdlovsk Regional Physics Olympiad, in 1990 and 1991. participated in the All-Union Olympiads in physics and mathematics (among the top ten strongest). At the same time, in high school, he studied at the Correspondence School of Physics and Technology of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT).

In 1997 he graduated with honors from the Faculty of Physical and Quantum Electronics of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology with a specialization in nanoelectronics.

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD). In 2004 he defended his dissertation at the University of Nijmegen (Netherlands) on the topic "Creation and application of mesoscopic microprobes based on the quantum Hall effect".

From 1997 to 1999, he was a post-graduate student at the Institute for Problems of Microelectronics Technology and High-Purity Materials of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IPTM RAS) in Chernogolovka, Moscow Region.

In 1999, he moved to the Netherlands and began working in the High Magnetic Field Laboratory of the University of Nijmegen, where Andrey Geim (graduate of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, in the late 1980s, a member of IPTM RAS) became his supervisor.

In 2001, together with Game, he moved to work in the UK. He was admitted to the University of Manchester as a Research Fellow.

Engaged in research in the field of mesoscopic physics and nanotechnology. In 2000, he was one of the authors of the study of the properties of superconductors with sizes less than one micrometer. In 2003, together with Game, he created adhesive tape using the gecko foot sticking mechanism.

The main scientific achievement of Konstantin Novoselov is the study of graphene - a new allotropic (excellent in properties and structure) modification of carbon, a promising material for nanoelectronics. In 2004, Novoselov and Game, for the first time in history, were able to obtain in laboratory conditions a graphene film one atom thick from graphite.

He is a professor at the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Manchester. As of 2014, teaches the course "Advanced Frontiers in Solid State Physics".

On October 5, 2010, Novoselov was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics (together with Geim) for "fundamental experiments with the two-dimensional material graphene". He became the youngest Nobel laureate in physics over the past 37 years (since 1973) and the only laureate in all fields in 2010 who was born after 1970.

Commander of the Order of the Netherlands Lion (2010; for outstanding contributions to Dutch science). For services to science, he was awarded the title of Knight Bachelor (assigned on December 31, 2011 by decree of Queen Elizabeth II). Knighted the Order of the British Empire: a solemn ceremony at Buckingham Palace was held in May 2012 by the daughter of the Queen of Great Britain, Princess Anne.

Winner of the European Prize Nicholas Kurti (Nicholas Kurti European Prize; 2007; for work in the field of research of low temperatures and magnetic fields). In 2008, he received the Europhysics Prize for the discovery of graphene.

Fellow of the Royal Society of London since 2011, awarded his Leverhulme Medal in 2013 for his work on graphene.

Since 2013 - foreign member of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.

Lives in Manchester, is a Russian citizen and a British subject.

Wife - Irina, microbiologist. Twin daughters - Victoria and Sophia (born in 2009).

Likes to play the piano.

Graphene is a material that has been at the center of attention of experimental physicists around the world for the past six years. Before that, however, for 40 years it was believed that a two-dimensional sheet of carbon is nothing more than a model abstraction, which in some cases makes it possible to make cumbersome calculations in quantum mechanics a little more liftable and visible. So, Konstantin Novoselov and Andrei Game, currently working at the University of Manchester, received the Nobel Prize for moving graphene from a theoretical plane to a practical one. However, first things first.

Long road to graphene

It is known from school chemistry that the properties of a substance depend not only on the atoms that make it up, but also on their relative position. Carbon is usually cited as an example, which in the case of one arrangement of atoms gives brittle dirty graphite, and in the other - hard shining diamond. Such simple substances that have different properties with the same composition are called allotropic modifications. In this sense, graphite and diamond are allotropic modifications of carbon.

In the 60s of the last century, physicists began to intensively study not only three-dimensional, but also two-dimensional allotropic modifications. In particular, for example, carbon atoms can be located in the same plane in the simplest and most natural way - in the form of a hexagonal lattice (that is, a lattice in which all cells are hexagons). Even then, by the way, this idea was not new - for example, Oscar Klein predicted unusual quantum properties for such a material back in 1929.

At the same time, attempts were made to obtain separate "pieces" of flat carbon, but they did not lead to success. As a result, many scientists decided that it was basically impossible to obtain this material in practice for reasons of stability (this happens all the time in physics - for example, the quarks that make up hadrons do not exist separately).

As a result, graphene remained nothing more than an abstraction, convenient, for example, for calculations, because in the case of two dimensions, many equations related, for example, to quantum mechanics, are noticeably simplified.

The first harbinger of the revolutionary discovery by Andrey Geim and Konstantin Novoselov was the discovery of fullerenes in the mid-1980s. Fullerenes are convex polyhedra with carbon atoms at their vertices. The most famous such material is called C 60 - in this modification, the atoms are located at the vertices of a figure that resembles a soccer ball (in mathematics, such a polyhedron is called a truncated icosahedron). For this discovery, by the way, the Americans Robert Curl and Richard Smellie, together with the Briton Harold Kroto, received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1996.

Then, in the 90s, the development of technology made it possible to study the so-called carbon nanotubes (several groups of researchers, including Soviet physicists, claim the title of discoverers of these objects at once). From tubes, it would seem, to graphene is a stone's throw: I cut them lengthwise, unfolded them - that's a two-dimensional sheet of carbon is ready. It turns out that this is what scientists from Stanford University and Rice University proved in 2009. However, for the first time the "impossible" material was obtained in a different way.

Dominance War

Andrey Konstantinovich Geim was born in 1958 in Sochi. In 1982 he graduated from the Faculty of General and Applied Physics of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, and in 1987 he defended his Ph.D. thesis at the Institute of Solid State Physics of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Until 1990, he worked at the Institute for Problems of Microelectronics Technology and High-Purity Materials, after which he went abroad. At the time of the discovery (2004), he worked with Konstantin Novoselov at the University of Manchester. Now he works there, being formally a citizen of Holland. It is noteworthy that Game is the winner of the Ig Nobel Prize in 2000 for his study of frog levitation.

As is often the case in science, Geim and Novoselov managed not only to surprise most physicists by obtaining in practice material that was considered unstable, but also to get ahead of several other groups of researchers who literally breathed it down the back of their heads.

So, for example, the peeling technology (this is the name of the technique by which immigrants from the former USSR worked) was not invented by Game and Novoselov - this method was unsuccessfully tried by researchers led by Rodney Ruoff from the University of Texas back in 1999.

Further, just two months after the publication of the article by Geim and Novoselov, scientists from the Georgia Tech University submitted an article for publication in which it was proposed to obtain thin sheets of carbon by burning silicon carbide at a temperature of 1300 degrees Celsius. In addition, at the same time, physicists from Columbia University tried to "draw" similar films - they attached a carbon crystal to the needle of a force microscope and drove it over the surface. In this way, however, they managed to obtain films as thick as 10 carbon layers.

Konstantin Sergeevich Novoselov was born in 1974 in Nizhny Tagil. In 1997 he graduated from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and until 1999 worked at the Institute for Problems of Microelectronics Technology and Highly Pure Materials, after which he went abroad. Currently working at the University of Manchester. He has two citizenships - Russian and British.

How did Game and Novoselov get ahead of their rivals? It turns out that anyone who has ever written with a pencil, against their will, was engaged in the production of graphene sheets - while writing, carbon from a graphite tip peels off in flat flakes, some of which may be only one atom thick. It was this idea that Geim and Novoselov used - they peeled off the flakes from graphite with adhesive tape, after which they transferred them to a special substrate. In 2004 in Science an article by physicists appeared in which they described not only the technology for obtaining graphene, but also some of its properties.

Physicists have learned how to create graphene ribbons suitable for nanoelectronics. Scientists have explained the failures of high-temperature superconductivity. Physicists have managed to populate free places in graphene with electrons. Chemists have managed to increase the size of a graphene sheet dozens of times. Physicists have uncovered the mechanism of graphene rupture. All of the above are just the headlines of notes on graphene that have appeared on Lente.ru since the beginning of 2010.

Over the past 6 years since the discovery of Geim and Novoselov, scientists have learned not only to produce more or less large pieces of graphene, but also discovered the incredible potential of this material. Thus, graphene has high strength (it is 100 times stronger than a sheet of steel of the same thickness), thermal conductivity (graphene conducts heat 10 times better than copper), maximum electron mobility among all known materials, and is also suitable for creating unique electronics and much more.

True, almost all the possibilities of graphene are still far from practical - a fact that, obviously, the Nobel Committee is well aware of (that's why the wording with which Geim and Novoselov were awarded the award sounds like "for pioneering experiments concerning two-dimensional graphene material"). Despite this, graphene is the future. A future that will become a reality thanks to the work of once-Russian scientists Andrey Geim and Konstantin Novoselov.

Nearly an hour of leisurely conversation with the Nobel Prize winner the night after it was announced is beyond my wildest expectations.

According to the logic of things, a mythological creature in the form of a brilliant scientist (others do not receive such awards) should be out of reach - let's say, on top of the world, in parallel space, I don't know where.

But two amazing guys who presented humanity with a miracle in the form of the thinnest and most durable material on Earth continue to live as if nothing had happened - they do not turn off their phones, go to work, hold seminars at their university, sit at a meeting.

"Don't worry, they are here," they tell me at the University of Manchester, "working as usual, they should be free after six." Andrey Geim I still do not find. Interview "Rossiyskaya Gazeta" gives Konstantin Novoselov.

The Nobel in physics was awarded to this couple for two, they worked on their discovery for seven long years, both from Russia, the scientific cradle is also one for two - the Physics and Technology Institute of Dolgoprudny near Moscow and the Institute of Solid State Physics of the USSR Academy of Sciences in Chernogolovka.

51-year-old Andrei Game, having left Russia, worked at the universities of Nottingham, Copenhagen and Nijmegen. At the University of Manchester since 2001. He also enticed his graduate student, who had been working in the Netherlands since 1999, to follow him. At the university, 36-year-old professor Novoselov is called funny - "Professor Kostya." But this is ridiculous to us, and it is difficult for foreigners to pronounce the full name of their Russian professor. Besides, in good old England, students really call their professors simply by their first names.

Indeed, the story has already become a legend, how two scientists working in Britain from Russia used supposedly adhesive tape, splitting ordinary, like a pencil, graphite into small flakes. Opened by Geim-Novoselov, graphene is a completely new, previously unknown to mankind, the thinnest, one atom thick material, hundreds of times stronger than steel. One can now fantasize endlessly about the widest possibilities of using their discovery for further technical progress.

Russian newspaper: Professor Novoselov, please accept our sincere congratulations on the highest award. Can I just call you by your first name?

Konstantin Novoselov: Thank you! Yes, of course you can.

RG: Konstantin, I read on the website of your University of Manchester that Andrey Game told how he slept peacefully all night on the eve of the news of the Nobel, because he did not expect to win a prize. And you?

Novoselov: Same thing for me.

RG: Why didn't you both expect it?

Novoselov: I cannot answer for Andrey, I will speak about myself. In principle, rumors that we might be awarded the Nobel Prize appeared 2 or 3 years ago. And to be honest, it was all not very pleasant, so at some point I decided that I would not pay attention to these matters at all. And life got better.

RG: Why did it ruin your life?

Novoselov: Well, after all, getting the Nobel Prize is probably the dream of every physicist. And if you understand that there is a chance, then involuntarily you start to worry. So it's better not to think about it.

RG: The graphene you discovered has been called a potential successor to silicone and its enormous social and economic benefits for society. Is this true and what are the benefits?

Novoselov: About the fact that graphene is the successor to silicone, I will keep silent. There are a lot of other problems that you can read a whole lecture about, but in fact there are a huge number of areas where graphene can work, where it can replace other materials or just open up new applications. And to be honest, I really believe that this will happen.

One of the nearest directions, which is being developed by several companies at once, is conductive transparent coatings. They are needed, for example, in your mobile phone for a touch screen, for liquid crystal displays, for your computer, for solar panels. This can provide a huge market, graphene can greatly improve existing technologies.

One of the reasons why graphene has gone from first measurements to near-real-world applications so quickly is that so many people around the world are doing it. For example, Samsung is very active in the field of graphene science and a lot of research work has been done on Samsung. They have great researchers.

But the Manchester Business School could answer your question in detail today. They specifically study the social consequences of the development of graphene science. In Manchester and Atlanta (USA), government grants have been received for such research and comparative analysis.

As for Andrey and me, the main "social consequence" is that over the past seven years we have been doing very interesting experiments and getting a lot of pleasure from it.

RG: What led you to this discovery? How did it happen?

Novoselov: This is, in principle, the style of work that Andrey enforces, or rather, instills in our laboratory and which I try to follow - the so-called "Friday Night Experiments". That is, when you can come up with a completely stupid, crazy idea and try it. And if it didn’t work, then it’s not scary - you didn’t spend a lot of time. And if it works, then it can bring very big results. And graphene was one of those ideas. There was an idea to make a graphite transistor by splitting it into small flakes, and, oddly enough, literally the very first samples started working and after that it was obvious that very interesting physics was behind this.

RG: Why did the University of Manchester become your research base? Is it an accident or a conscious choice?

Novoselov: To be honest, it was not my choice, but Andrey Geim's. We worked with him in Holland, I was his graduate student. Then he moved to Manchester and asked me to move with him. At that moment I got bored in Holland and gladly moved to England.

RG: In Russia, you are considered Russian physicists. Yes, and in the local media they also write - "Russian scientists working in Britain." Are you ready to admit that the Russian-Soviet school of physics laid the fundamental foundation, or, to put it better, the potential for your discovery?

Novoselov: Undoubtedly. The base was laid precisely in Russia. Phystech is probably the best institute in the world. After him, I worked in Chernogolovka, where there is an absolutely remarkable school of experimental and theoretical physics. Therefore, everything that I know about physics - not everything, but probably a lot - I got it there.

Russia's influence is decisive, but I would not like to shift the focus only to Russia. It must be remembered that science is an international thing. Without it, she can't work. Of all that we currently know about graphene, perhaps only 10 percent or even less has been obtained by us. A huge number of groups around the world are working on this problem, and we have used their results in our work too. We have a huge number of collaborators around the world, and we cooperate with them and compete at the same time. Therefore, it is essentially an international work.

RG: Can you name the Soviet or Russian school of physics as one of the best in the world? How would you rate her?

Novoselov: This is absolutely impossible to determine. I wish only the best for Russian science, but it would be completely wrong to say that we are the best. We just need to admit that we are very good, and therefore we need to go to the people. Go to other countries, give what we have and take what they have.

RG: Who would you call your main teacher?

Novoselov: Andrew. Of course, I learned a lot about physics at the Physics and Technology Institute and in Chernogolovka, but I learned how to do science by watching Andrei.

RG: What can you say about him? What makes Andrey Geim a unique partner for you in science?

Novoselov: He is an extremely intelligent person. I don't like the word genius, but I guess it applies to him. The most important thing Andrey taught me is not to be afraid to admit your mistakes and just be brave enough in science.

RG: Is it possible to somehow share and measure the contribution of each of you to this colossal seven-year work?

Novoselov: It's very difficult to pinpoint exactly, but most of it is him.

RG: What do you find most attractive about the working conditions provided by the University of Manchester?

Novoselov: The most important thing is that we are completely shielded from most of the administrative work here and we can only concentrate on science.

RG: British scientists constantly complain about the weak financial base of their universities and insufficient funding for science. Have you experienced it yourself?

Novoselov: It's true. But we were in a privileged situation, we were lucky. We had sufficient funding.

RG: How often do you visit Russia, whom do you visit?

Novoselov: I visit Russia once a year - one and a half, unfortunately, I can’t come more often. My relatives live in Moscow and Nizhny Tagil. I am happy to go there. I have a lot of friends there. Over the 11 years since I left, the changes are very noticeable. People on the streets began to look happier.

RG: Do you have a wife, children?

Novoselov: Yes, I have. They are with me in Manchester.

RG: When will the award ceremony take place?

Novoselov: Don't know.

RG: How did you find out that you were awarded the Nobel? How did all this happen, what did you experience at that moment? It's just unimaginable.

Novoselov: I Skyped with our collaborator from Holland, we discussed the latest charts for our new article. It was on Tuesday. The phone rang, I didn’t even turn off Skype, I just asked him to wait. I picked up the phone, they, these people from the committee, immediately gave themselves away with their Swedish accent. - said, congratulated. Then I went back to Skype, chatted a little with this person...

RG: That is, you were able to continue to "communicate" like this everyday, as if nothing had happened?

Novoselov: Yes. There are also people coming from America, and I tried to do something with them, and then all these calls started - and it was simply absolutely impossible to work. But in those few minutes that passed in all this first shock, I suddenly realized that everything - life has changed very much. And I wanted to bring it back. And in general, everything became somehow incomprehensible ...

RG: Why?

Novoselov: Well, it seems obvious to me. After all, it’s still hard to imagine how everything will go now. And I want to return everything to normal and start working normally and productively again. We were asked at the university the next day if we were rescheduling the seminar or leaving it, I said: let's try to do everything as close to a normal day as possible. It turns out badly, but... Our department arranged a meeting tonight, the students came, everyone was glad, of course.

RG: Do you envy those "for whom the summit is yet to come," as Vysotsky sang? Or keep climbing higher? Where to now?

Novoselov: I'm sure there's more to come. Any ideas. I will continue the most interesting experiments on graphene. This award set us back a lot. I will try to come up with something besides graphene ...

The names of the 2010 Nobel Prize winners in physics have been announced in Stockholm. They were Professor Andrey Geim and Professor Konstantin Novoselov. Both laureates, who work at the British University of Manchester, come from Russia. Andrei Geim, 52, is a citizen of the Netherlands, while Konstantin Novoselov, 36, has Russian and British citizenship.

The world's most prestigious scientific award, worth about $1.5 million this year, was awarded to scientists for the discovery of graphene, an ultra-thin and extremely durable material, which is a carbon film one atom thick.

About what difficulties arose during the discovery of graphene and what is the practical application of this material, Alexander Sergeev, scientific editor of the Vokrug Sveta magazine, talks on the air of Radio Liberty:

The very fact that scientists have obtained graphene is remarkable. Theoretically, graphene was predicted half a century before its synthesis. At school, everyone went through the structure of graphite - this is an ordinary pencil. The carbon atom forms thin layers that are repeatedly layered on top of each other. Each layer consists of hexagonal cells that, like a honeycomb, dock with each other.

The problem was to get one layer separated from the ones above and below. For a single layer of this two-dimensional crystal, so called because it has no third dimension, a bunch of different interesting physical properties were predicted. There were many experiments. But it was not possible to achieve the separation of one layer from all the others with a stable result.

Andrey Geim and Konstantin Novoselov came up with a way that they were able to isolate this layer and subsequently make sure that it really is one. The scientists were then able to measure its physical properties and verify that the theoretical predictions were more or less correct. This experiment is very simple: scientists took an ordinary pencil, a piece of graphite. With adhesive tape, a layer of graphite was removed from it, and then they began to peel it off. When 1-2 layers remained, the graphite was transferred onto a silicon substrate.

Why did all previous experiments fail? Because (and this was theoretically predicted) the graphene film, a two-dimensional carbon crystal, is unstable to twisting. As soon as she is in a free state, she will immediately begin to crumple. There was even such an opinion that it was impossible to isolate graphene. The work of scientists was done in 2004, and in 2009 a piece of graphene was already obtained. That is, a sheet of graphene almost a centimeter in size. And now we are talking about tens of centimeters.

Why do we need this graphene at all?

All electronics is now moving in the direction of reducing the size of elements - transistors, electrodes, etc. The smaller the elements inside the processor, the more elements can be placed in it and the more powerful the processor can be assembled. Therefore, more complex logical operations will be performed in it. What can be thinner than one atomic layer? Graphene has the property of thinness.

In addition, it conducts electricity. And it's almost transparent. At the same time, it is strong enough: it is one of the strongest materials per atomic layer. It practically does not pass through itself any other substances. Even gaseous helium cannot seep through graphene, so this is a very reliable coating. It can be used, for example, in touch screens, because the transparent electrode will not obscure the image. You can try to use it in electronics. Now they are trying to develop transistors based on graphenes. True, there are difficulties here. Graphene has anomalous properties that make it somewhat difficult to use in transistors. But after we have learned how to obtain atomic layers, these are probably already surmountable obstacles. This is a fundamentally new material. There has never been anything like it. The thinnest conductor monolayer that can be used in technology, in electronics.

The new Nobel laureates have a rather complicated biography. One of them is a citizen of the Netherlands, the other has two passports: British and Russian. They worked, as far as is known, in the scientific center in Manchester, England. Is science becoming international, or is it the sad fate of Russian scientists to make great discoveries only if they go abroad?

In order to engage in serious scientific work, one needs not only the material and technical base, but also just peace of mind. A scientist should not be confused by some questions. Andrei Game 10 years ago received the Ig Nobel Prize for experiments on the magnetic levitation of frogs. The Ig Nobel Prize is a joke anti-award for meaningless work. A scientist needs a certain freedom in his work. Then ideas are born. Today I levitated frogs, and tomorrow I get graphenes.

If a person has such conditions, then he works more efficiently. After all, both current Nobel laureates in physics studied at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology - RS). And very soon they left for Holland, for Great Britain, because there the atmosphere of work is more favorable for the search for scientific means necessary for conducting research. They tore off the carbon films with adhesive tape, but they had to be measured with an atomic force microscope. So this microscope had to be. In Russia, of course, they are, but they are much more difficult to access.

If I say that Russia has a good basic education that makes it possible to grow Nobel Prize winners, but at the same time there is no serious scientific high-tech base for experiments, would that be true?

As with any generalization, there is some stretch here. With education, we are no longer so good and smooth, because in many places scientific schools are being destroyed. There was a big break in the work of the 90s. There are isolated schools in Russia where everything is still going very well, but there are problems with equipment and conducting serious expensive research. Somewhere this equipment ends up: from time to time, quite serious purchases are made, for example, to the Kurchatov Institute. But how effectively it is applied there is a big question. Therefore, in some places there is a strong scientific school, while in others there are funds for technology. It is quite difficult to exchange them among themselves for reasons of prestige and bureaucracy. In Russia, high-class research is also possible, but it is much more difficult to conduct it - it is a more difficult environment to work here.

Scientific research is multifaceted. But are there separate areas that the Nobel Committee defines as breakthrough? For which it is easier to get a Nobel Prize? Or are there no such directions?

I looked at the list of Nobel Prize winners in physics for the last 20 years. There is no clear trend. There are quite a few awards in the field of elementary particle physics, fundamental physical interactions. This is understandable - they do quite interesting work there. But here we must take into account an important point. It is often said that in order to receive a Nobel Prize, it is not enough to do breakthrough work. We still have to live until the time when it is appreciated. Therefore, the Nobel Prize, as a rule, is awarded to people at a very respectable age. From this point of view, this year's Nobel Prize in Physics is an exception to the rule. Novoselov is now 36 years old. Over the past 20 years, there has not been such a case among the awards in physics, and, in my opinion, there has never been one at all! Over the past 8 years, none of the scientists under 50 years old has received the Nobel Prize, and many received it at the age of 70 or even 80 years old for work done decades ago.

The current Nobel Prize was awarded in violation of the rules. Maybe the Nobel Committee felt that the prize was becoming gerontological and that the age of its receipt should be lowered. The last time at a "young" age the prize in physics was awarded in 2001. The winners were between 40 and 50 years old.

Now, apparently, an installation has been made for actual experimental work. So, although the Nobel Prize does not include astronomy, in the last 10 years there have been two very important prizes in astrophysics. There were prizes in high energy physics and elementary particle physics, in solid state physics, in condensed state physics - that is, solid, liquid and other states in which atoms are close to each other. Almost all of these works, one way or another, are tied to quantum physics.

Why exactly quantum theory? Is it due to some personal preferences of the members of the Nobel Committee? Or is it really the nearest scientific future?

The reason is very simple. In fact, all physics, except for the theory of gravity, is now quantum. Almost everything new that is being done in the field of physics, with the exception of certain side directions, improvements and breakthroughs that were in the past, is based on quantum physics. Only gravity has not yet succumbed to this "quantization". And everything else that concerns the foundation of physics is quantum theory and the quantum theory of matter.

The 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to Russians working in the UK - Konstantin Novoselov and Andrey Geim - for creating graphene, the Swedish Academy has announced. The award was given to scientists "for pioneering experiments in the study of the two-dimensional material graphene," according to a statement on the award's website.

Graphene is a single layer of carbon atoms interconnected by a structure of chemical bonds resembling the structure of a honeycomb in its geometry.

Andrey Game was born in Sochi in 1958, now has Dutch citizenship.

In 1982 he graduated from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, Faculty of General and Applied Physics, received a PhD in Physics and Mathematics from the Institute of Solid State Physics of the USSR Academy of Sciences.

Worked as a researcher at the Institute for Problems of Technology of Microelectronics and Highly Pure Materials of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Chernogolovka near Moscow, the University of Nottingham, the University of Bath (Great Britain), the University of Nijmegen (Netherlands), since 2001 - at the University of Manchester.

Andrey Geim is currently Head of the Manchester Center for MesoScience and Nanotechnology and Head of the Department of Condensed Matter Physics.

Konstantin Novoselov was born in Nizhny Tagil in 1974 and now has British and Russian citizenship.

In 1997 he graduated from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, Faculty of Physical and Quantum Electronics.

He is currently a professor at the University of Manchester.

The joint work of people from the Institute of Problems of Microelectronics Technology and Highly Pure Materials of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Chernogolovka near Moscow at the University of Manchester began in 2001, when Game was invited to the position of director of the Center for MesoScience and Nanotechnology at the University of Manchester. Konstantin Novoselov, a fellow of the Leverhulme Foundation, joined the new research of his compatriot.

Geim and Novoselov are the 2008 Europhysics Prize winners of the European Physical Society. This high European award has been awarded annually since 1975. The official wording of the €10,000 award is "for the discovery and isolation of the free monatomic layer of carbon and the explanation of its outstanding electronic properties."

On October 5, 2010, it became known that Konstantin Novoselov and Andrei Geim were awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics.

The award was given to scientists "for pioneering experiments in the study of the two-dimensional material graphene," according to a statement on the award's website.

The material was prepared on the basis of information from RIA Novosti and open sources