Andre Geim — physics (nobel) with roots in the USSR
Andre Geim (Andrei Konstantinovich Geim) was born on 21 October 1958 in Sochi and grew up in Nalchik from 1965. He graduated from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and received his PhD in 1987 from the Institute of Solid State Physics in Chernogolovka. After postdoctoral posts in Nottingham, Bath and Copenhagen he worked at Radboud University Nijmegen from 1994 and at the University of Manchester from 2001. In 2004 his group isolated graphene, for which he shared the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics with Konstantin Novoselov; he was knighted in 2012.
"Geim left the USSR in 1990 for postdoctoral posts in Nottingham, Bath and Copenhagen, moved to Nijmegen in the Netherlands in 1994 and to Manchester in 2001. He held Dutch citizenship until 2025 and has been a British citizen since 2012; in 2026 he was appointed a chair professor at the University of Hong Kong."
Migration storyTracing the roots — Sochi
Geim was born in Sochi, Russian SFSR, in 1958, grew up in Nalchik and was educated at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and the Institute of Solid State Physics in Chernogolovka. Both of his parents were engineers of German origin.
Sochi. At the time, this region was one of the fifteen republics of the Soviet Union.
A career defined by ambition
"I am not a British scientist. I am a European scientist."