Scientific Discoveries

Andre, 36, first worked with Andre Geim, 51, PhD student in the Netherlands. He subsequently followed Geim to the United Kingdom and they have been working together ever since. They have shown that graphene, which is carbon in a one-atom-thick flat form, has exceptional properties that originate from the remarkable world of quantum physics. As a material, it is completely new – not only the thinnest 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. At a time when many believed it was impossible for such thin crystalline materials to be stable, they extracted the graphene from a piece of graphite such as is found in ordinary pencils, using regular adhesive tape.

His achievements have made it possible to treat infertility, a medical condition affecting a large proportion of humanity worldwide. He first came up with the idea for a treatment as early as the 1950s. He then worked systematically to realize his goal, discovered important principles for human fertilization, and succeeded in accomplishing fertilization of human egg cells in test tubes. His efforts were finally crowned by success on 25 July 1978, when the world’s first ‘test-tube baby’ was born. During the following years, Edwards and his co-workers refined the fertilization technology and shared it with colleagues around the world. A new field of medicine has emerged, with Robert Edwards leading the process all the way from the fundamental discoveries to the current, successful therapy.

His Nobel Prize for the work on quasicrystals has fundamentally altered the way chemists perceive solid matter. In all solid matter, atoms were believed to be packed inside crystals in symmetrical patterns that were repeated periodically over and over again. Shechtman’s work (started in 1984), however, showed that the atoms in what he called quasicrystals were packed in a pattern that could not be repeated. Such a pattern was considered impossible, so he had to fight a fierce battle against the scientific establishment. With time though, other scientists produced other kinds of quasicrystals in their labs and discovered naturally occurring quasicrystals in mineral samples. Quasicrystals have also been found in a certain form of steel, where they reinforce the material like armor. Scientists are currently experimenting with using quasicrystals in different products such as frying pans and diesel engines.

They were mapping the connections to the hippocampus in rats moving in a room when they discovered an astonishing pattern of activity in a nearby part of the brain called the entorhinal cortex. As it turned out, they discovered a key component of the brain's positioning system. They identified a type of nerve cell, which they called ‘grid cells,’ that generates a coordinate system and allows for precise positioning and pathfinding. Recent investigations with brain imaging techniques made by other scientists have provided evidence that grid cells exist also in humans. In patients with Alzheimer’s disease, these cells are frequently affected at an early stage, and these individuals often lose their way and cannot recognize the environment. Knowledge about the brain’s positioning system may, therefore, help us understand the reason for spatial memory loss that affects people with this disease.