Yesterday the Nobel Nobel Prize in Physics 2010 was announced, and the winners are Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov for their work in “groundbreaking experiments regarding the two-dimensional material graphene.” Andre Geim already won notoriety when he captured the IgNobel in Physics for his paper titled “Of Flying Frogs and Levitrons” published in European Journal of Physics, where he demonstrated the use magnets to levitate a frog. Free-floating amphibians are surely an important field of study, but graphene, a one atom thick sheet of carbon, has some truly fascinating properties useful for medicine. We’ve covered a lot of medically related research in the last years that uses graphene for things like sensors, DNA sequencing, and anti-microbial agents.
Here’s the scientific primer from the Nobel Foundation:
YouTube: 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics Announcement
Press release…
Scientific background from the Nobel Foundation… (.pdf)