Andre Geim: One of My Heroes
Photo Credit: Bengt Oberger – CC BY-SA 4.0
If you don’t know who this man is, you really should. He’s one of my biggest heroes.
His name is (Sir) Andre Geim, a Russian/Soviet-born Dutch/British Physicist and Professor at the University of Manchester.
In 2000 he was awarded the Ig Nobel Prize — a parody prize that “recognizes” the most questionable/joke-worthy science performed in the previous year. Geim had been studying levitation in frogs using intrinsic magnetism.
Ten years later, he won the Nobel Prize in Physics. That was for jointly discovering graphene — the thinnest material in the world and one of the strongest.
Lessons:
1. Don’t fear failure.
2. Don’t fear ridicule. And don’t pay attention if/when it comes your way.
3. Remember, creativity is a volume game. You have to generate (and pursue) multiple ideas to get to the home runs. And along the way, refer to #1 and #2 above.
4. Explore and Experience. Try different things. Geim switched his research focus five times before getting tenured. After winning his Nobel Prize, Geim started researching low-dimensional water. He received the International Creativity Prize for Water in 2018 for this work.
5. Have a sense of humor. It’s just life. Andre Geim gladly accepted his 2000 Ig Nobem Prize. He also named his pet hamster as a co-author in one of his 2001 papers.
– Zeeshan Zaidi
