2 Physicists Win Nobel Prize for Work With Carbon Film a Single Atom Thick

Continuing a British sweep of this year’s Nobel Prizes, two professors at the University of Manchester this morning were awarded the physics prize for what the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences described as their “groundbreaking experiments regarding the two-dimensional material graphene,” a film of carbon just a single atom thick, with unusual and exciting properties for both studies in quantum physics and practical applications in consumer electronics.

The winners, Andre Geim, 51, and Konstantin Novoselov, 36, were born in Russia and worked together in the Netherlands before moving to Manchester. They will split the prize, worth about $1.5-million this year, which is to be presented at a ceremony in December. For Mr. Geim, at least, this is not the first Nobel recognition: In 2000 he was a recipient of an Ig Nobel Prize, an award presented by a science-humor magazine at Harvard University, for a study that used magnets to levitate a frog and a sumo wrestler. This is the second Nobel Prize awarded this year to British science: The award in medicine on Monday went to a researcher who helped develop techniques of in vitro fertilization.