Sir Andre Geim
Regius Professor & Royal Society Research Professor
Professor of Condensed Matter Physics
Poking in directions far away from my immediate area of expertise has led to interesting results, even if the initial ideas were extremely basic. This has influenced my research style. Earlier in my career, I started making similar exploratory detours that somehow acquired the name ‘Friday night experiments’. The term is of course inaccurate. No serious work can be accomplished in just one night. It usually requires many months of lateral thinking and digging through irrelevant literature without any clear idea in sight. Eventually, you get a feeling – rather than an idea – about what could be interesting to explore. Next, you give it a try, and normally you fail. Then, you may or may not try again. In any case, at some moment you must decide (and this is the most difficult part) whether to continue further efforts or cut losses and start thinking of another experiment. All this happens against the backdrop of your main research and occupies only a small part of your time and brain.