Andre Geim

Helen Grady profiles Professor Sir Andre Geim who is one of the most unusual scientists working in Britain - perhaps the world - today.

This week he was awarded the Royal Society's Copley Medal, believed to be the world's oldest science prize, for his ground-breaking experiments using graphene - thought by many to be the miracle material of the 21st century.

He is also a winner of both the Ig Nobel Prize for improbable research and the real Nobel Prize in Physics.

"What we should be doing with is Andre," one former boss tells us, "is just give him money to go and play, because by going and playing he's much more likely to come up with something revolutionary".

Producer: Mark Savage.