This is great news. During the Cold War, the Nobel Prize for Physics and Chemistry and even for those for "softer" sciences such as Medicine and Chemistry [and even in the humanities such as literature-]were politicized. During the Cold War, weapons research in the U.S was the driving force of the Nobel Prize winner in Physics. Many of the prize winners in Physics during the Cold War for the U.S were Europeans working in U.S weapons laboratories. The Cold War has ended and the U.S economy has lost its edge. This is one of the key reasons why great European scientists are doing their research in Europe again. I am certain if this was the Cold War, these Russian scientists would have been working at some leading weapon's lab in the United States. But now they are working on Britain. London is much closer in geography and culture to Moscow than to Washington. Europe is again winning Nobel Prizes in Physics and Mathematics because Europeans are doing great research in European universities. As for Russia, there will be no great modernization in Russia until scientists such as these ones are kept in Russia. So, cut down the creation of stupid rich oligarchs and invest your money in creating and keeping great scientific minds and the future will be secure for Russia.

Graphene sounds very interesting. I predicted years back that a super battery/energy source would involve a membrane of some sort. Now somebody go develop the right molecular electrolyte...produce inexpensive Graphene...and make an economical power source! Remember to give lots of money to charity.

@PR101 You might want to read the full Nobel Prize pdf file on this. It is important and significant scientifically and many scientists did theoretical work on this before their "sticky tape" experiment. But, Geim hasn't worked in Russia since 1990 and is a Dutch citizen, I believe, and Novoselov, his student, has dual British/Russian citizenship and did his doctoral work in the Netherlands.

Garry Max, Of course Geim left Russia in 1990! This is significant. This was the beginning of ten years of catastrophe for Russia. The scientific bases of the society was systematically destroyed and great scientists left the country to find universities with funding and proper equipments to do their research. During the Soviet Union, despite the politicization of Physics, the Soviet Union was in the leading edge of scientific discoveries and Soviet Scientists won number of Nobel Prize for Physics. Today, Russia needs to rethink backing up primarily innovasions driven by summerism and corporate drive. These are two ideas behind President Mevedev's modernization project. This is bad model for Russia. Instead, Russia needs to invest in basic research and development in education where young students can be trained in science and engineering. That does not means that commercial oriented innovation centers are not good ideas. However, today, Russia has the financial capacity to attract back their senior scientists it lost during the dark days of the 1990s. These researchers have created new lives for themselves but they can come back to Russia part of their time and collaborate with researchers based in Russia. Now, about your comment of the citizenship of Geim andNovoselov. These men are Russians, will always be Russians. Remember how after the end of WWII so many Germans with Germans names, born, raised and educated in Germany won Nobel Prizes in Phsysics for the United States! Do you think these were Germany Nobel Prizes or American Nobel Prizes? At any case, the Cold War is over and the U.S global scientific dominance and also political culture have started to decline. The British and Dutch know better. They know that Geim/Novoselove are scientific high end immigrants that their mother tongue and moral sensibilities is Russian.

PR101 With your propensity for directing Russian political policy from the safety of this forum, in order to help implement your philosophy, it might be good for you to move to Russia and run for political office so you could help implement your ideas. Otherwise, it will be 100 years before some of them will come to fruition, if ever. October 07, 2010, 16:10, PR101 wrote >These men are Russians, will always be Russians. Remember how after the end of WWII so many Germans with Germans names, born, raised and educated in >Germany won Nobel Prizes in Phsysics for the United States! Do you think these were Germany Nobel Prizes or American Nobel Prizes? First of all, as you know, countries do not claim Nobel Prizes, individuals do. But, if Nobel Prizes are in some ways to be attributed to countries, or citizenship, it should be the countries in which they did most of the work, after all, the resources and conditions, which are probably the most important factors, occurred in the countries where the work was done. Birth origin in and of itself should not be a significant factor.