Duo wins physics Nobel for super-thin carbon

Two Russian-born scientists based at the University of Manchester in the UK shared the 2010 Nobel Prize for Physics for their "groundbreaking" work on a material with amazing properties.

Andrei Geim, 51, and Konstantin Novoselov, 36, have been announced as the winners of the £900,000 prize for their research on graphene. Graphene is a form of carbon. As a material it is completely new — not only the thinnest ever but also the strongest. As a conductor of electricity, it performs as well as copper. As a conductor of heat, it outperforms all other known materials.

It is almost completely transparent, yet so dense that not even helium, the smallest gas atom, can pass through it. Graphene is one atom thick, which makes it the thinnest material ever discovered. Graphene is highly conductive, conducting both heat and electricity better than any other material, including copper, and it is also stronger than diamond.

About Nobel prize in physics: Physics was the prize area which Alfred Nobel mentioned first in his will. At that time, in the end of the nineteenth century, many people viewed physics as the foremost of the sciences, and perhaps Nobel saw it this way as well. His own research was also closely tied to physics.

In 1901 the very first Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Wilhelm Röntgen for his discovery of X-rays. In more recent years, the Physics Prize has been awarded for both pioneering discoveries and groundbreaking inventions.

The Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.