gerisullivan | Another Improbable Day

Ten years ago, Andre Geim and his fellow researcher Sir Michael Berry won an Ig Nobel Prize in Physics for using magnets to levitate a frog.

Today, Andre Geim became the first individual to win both an Ig Nobel Prize and a Nobel Prize when he and his fellow researcher Konstantin Novoselov were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics "for groundbreaking experiments regarding the two-dimensional material graphene."

As if that weren't enough improbable delight for a day, the Nobel Foundation website has a tradition of doing short telephone interviews with new Nobel Laureates. Nobelprize.org Editor-in-Chief Adam Smith finished his interview with Andre Geim by talking about his unique Ig Nobel/Nobel status and asking if he plans to display the two prizes together in his office.

And so the interview ended with the new Nobel Laureate talk about his pride in having won the Ig Nobel Prize, and the head of the Nobel Prize website following that by saying, "It certainly doesn’t seem to have done you any harm. On the contrary, I suspect."

Ah, yes. Not only do I love living in the future, I love living in such an improbable world.