2010 Physics Nobel Prize (Graphene) (opens in new tab)

Geim's the guy who levitated the frog:

"Geim shared the 2000 Ig Nobel Prize with Sir Michael Berry of Bristol University, for levitating the frog. His award of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2010 made him the first person to win an Ig followed by the real version."

Badass. (Even if my physics past wants someone to win something big for work on silicates one day. Dammit, glasses are fascinating.)

Anything involving cleaning with 'piranha' probably isn't really a DIY project.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piranha_solution#Safety

He also chose his hamster as co-author for one of his articles:

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0921-4526(00)00753-5

Your comment and the replies are basically just disagreeing about semantics. In basically any use of the word "physics" for organizations (like "physics departments", "Nobel prize in physics", the "American Physical Society"), "physics" is a discipline which is much broader than simply the search for new fundamental physical laws. It basically includes any field that uses the training and techniques useful for searching for new fundamental physical laws. For example: condensed matter, optics, astronomy, astrophysics, quantum computing. That is, physics organizations (like most academic organizations) are united by a common set of training and techniques, not a common objective. This is just a fact about the useful way to organize human beings.

But, if you are defining "physics" to mean "fundamental physics"---i.e. new laws of nature--then...

(1) There hasn't been a confirmed theoretical physics discovery since 1967 when the Higgs mechanisms completed the Standard Model (although some might argue that the profoundly new understanding of existing fundamental physical law provided by asymptotic freedom, in 1973, qualifies as fundamental physics even if no fundamental laws were discovered per se).

(2) There hasn't been a non-trivial (in the sense of being both not-easily-predicted by theory, like the top quark, and not trivially incorporated into existing theory, like neutrino masses) discovery in experimental physics since 1973-4, when the electroweak and strong theories were more or less confirmed. (It doesn't qualify as "easily predicted" since there were serious doubts beforehand.)

There are possible exceptions to (2), depending on which experiments you consider to be most important for dark energy, dark matter, and cosmology/CMB. There haven't really been any decisive experiments---only a steady accumulation of evidence. I wouldn't consider any theory related to these three as confirmed.

So yes, the field of fundamental physics is profoundly stagnant.

(This is just the best historical understanding of a myself, a grad student, so I could be wrong or disagreed with by more prestigious physicists. Take it with a grain of salt.)

From Alfred Nobel's Will: "...The said interest shall be divided into five equal parts, which shall be apportioned as follows: one part to the person who shall have made the most important discovery or invention within the field of physics;..."

According to that a price for physics is awarded to both a discovery as well as an invention and this would be the latter.

http://nobelprize.org/alfred_nobel/will/will-full.html

Yes, it is more of an engineering achievement than a physics discovery, but I would not read much more into it. The nobel prize is very frequently given to more of an 'engineering' discovery, as it's goal is to be given to the achievements which benefit man the most.

Just look at several Nobel prizes. The invention of radio, the invention of special gas valves used in lighthouses,the invention of the cloud chamber, the invention of the laser, the invention of the ion trap, etc.

Physics is still very active, but unfortunately we can't be discovering QED everyday.

I think you're belittling their work.

The Nobel Prize wasn't just for the method of extracting graphene, it was for 'groundbreaking experiments regarding the two-dimensional material graphene'. This includes extracting, identifying and characterizing the material.

Interesting to note, by the way, that the real innovation was in being able to identify (and characterize) the material - the same extraction method was used by another team.

To me, this is the essence of science - observing a phenomena (in this case - a material) and understanding it.

Equating Experimental Physics 'engineering' is a little to 'Sheldonistic' for me.

I suggest reading through at least 0.1% of the tens of thousands of papers which have been published on the subject of graphene alone in the last five years before declaring the entire field of physics to be stagnant.

Let me rephrase, since I am interested in the answer and am not sure why I'm getting downvotes. Why is graphene awarded a Noble in Physics, while buckyballs were awarded a Noble in Chemistry in 1996? Is it because fullerene occurs in nature?