Read some excerpts from Andre Geim’s Nobel autobiography and answer the questions.

a) How did Geim’s physics tutor help him in learning to deal with physics problems? Did that approach influence his research style in later years?

b) What did the scientist dream of investigating as a would-be physics student?

c) What difficult problem was Geim asked to solve at the entrance interview?

d) What is the author’s general opinion on the quality of higher education he acquired? How does Geim describe the examination style he got accustomed to at Phystech?

e) Was studying at university a struggle for Geim?

f) What was the topic of Geim’s Master’s project?

Andre Geim Born: 21 October 1958, Sochi, Russia Affiliation at the time of the award: University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom Field: Condensed matter physics, material physics

I was born on October 21, 1958 in the small Black Sea resort of Sochi, the second son of Nina Bayer and Konstantin Geim. /…/ At the age of seven, it was time to go to school and, reluctantly, I had to leave Sochi and go to live with my parents and my elder brother Vladislav in the city of Nalchik where they worked. /…/ For the next ten years I spent my school time there but returned to Sochi every year to stay with my grandmother during the summer months.

At the age of 16, I graduated from school with a gold medal, a distinction given to those who achieved the perfect score in all subjects (typically, the top 5%). My parents encouraged me to go to the best possible university and my sights were set on a couple of elite universities in Moscow. At school I was doing well in all exact sciences, including physics and chemistry, but my strongest subject was maths. However, my parents persuaded me that pure maths would not offer good career prospects. Hence, my decision was to study physics. /…/

My parents were supportive and /…/ paid for tutoring in maths, physics and Russian literature./…/ My tutor was a physics professor from Nalchik's University, Valery Petrosian. I thoroughly enjoyed every lesson. We solved many problems from old exam papers either from Phystech or, even harder, from international Olympiads. But even more helpful was the way he taught me to deal with physics problems: it is much easier to solve a problem if you first guess possible answers. Most problems at Phystech level require understanding of more than one area of physics and usually involve several logical steps. For example, in the case of a five-step solution, the possibilities for dealing with the problem quickly diverge and it may take many attempts before you get to the final answer. If, however, you try to solve the same problem from both ends, guessing two or three plausible answers, the space of possibilities and logical steps is much reduced. This is the way I learned to think then and I am still using it in my research every day, trying to build all the logical steps between what I have and what I think may be the end result of a particular project. /…/

I /…/ applied to Phystech. My examination marks were comfortably above the threshold required for admission, even though I got only one 'excellent' mark out of four exams, with the rest 'good'. Like many would-be students of that age, I dreamed of doing astrophysics or particle physics and aspired to solve 'the greatest mysteries of the universe'. But there was a rumour among Phystech candidates that saying so was considered to be very naïve by interviewers. I remembered that but did not want to cheat. So, when asked about my aspirations, I said that I wanted to study neutron stars (true) because I wanted to understand how matter behaved at extremely high densities (an excuse, not to sound so naïve). A prompt reply /…/ was 'Good, you can then study high-pressure physics at our Institute [of Solid State Physics].'

Another memory of that interview is being asked to estimate the weight of the earth's atmosphere (it was customary to give candidates some tricky mental problems to solve). I spent most of my three minutes multiplying the numbers in my head (atmospheric pressure multiplied by the surface area of the earth divided by gravity, all in SI units) and when I gave an answer in trillions of trillions of kg, everyone was surprised because I was only expected to give a general answer, not a specific number.

Phystech is quite an exceptional university, not only by Russian standards /…/. As Phystech students we were forced to think and find logic in everything we studied, as opposed to just memorising facts and formulas. This was largely due to Phystech's examination style: when it came to specialised subjects, many of the exams we took every year were open-book. This meant that there was no need to remember formulas, as long as one knew where to find them. Instead, the problems were challenging, requiring combinations of different subject areas and thus teaching us to really understand science rather than merely to memorise it.

From the moment of its establishment, Phystech was led by prominent Soviet scientists such as Kapitsa, Landau and many others. Among my own lecturers and examiners were many eminent scientists such as Emmanuel Rashba, Vladimir Pokrovski, Viktor Lidskii, Spartak Belyaev, Lev Pitaevskii, Isaak Khalatnikov and Lev Gorkov, to name but a few /…/.

For me personally, only the first half year at Phystech was a struggle. I came from a provincial town, while some of my classmates were graduates of elite Moscow schools specialising in physics and maths. Quite a few were winners of international Olympiads in physics or mathematics. The first few months were essentially designed to bring everyone to the level of those guys; they were nearly a year ahead of the rest of us in formal topics, especially maths. Only after I got all the highest marks in the first set of mid-year exams did I start feeling confident enough in this wunderkind environment and was able to relax somewhat. Despite all the pressure and grilling, every single one of us who managed to graduate from Phystech have great memories of those hard years and are most proud of our alma mater /…/.

My attitude of doing all right to reach a goal but not doing my utmost persisted through all the university and PhD years. I only started to really enjoy physics and do my absolute best, for its own sake, much later when I became an independent researcher.

The topic of my Master's project was electronic properties of metals, which I studied by exciting electromagnetic waves (so-called helicons) in spherical samples of ultrapure indium. From the helicon resonances I could extract information about the resistivity of those samples. The competitive edge of this research was the extreme purity of the indium I was working with, such that at low temperatures electrons could shoot over distances comparable with the sample diameter (~1 cm). After graduating I started working towards my PhD in the same laboratory, as was customary for many Phystech graduates.

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2010/geim-bio.htm)

1) Find additional information about Andre Geim’s scientific career after he defended his PhD thesis (you can find this information in Geim’s Nobel lecture: http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2010/geim-lecture.html)