Andre Geim on writing

 Andre Geim describe what he learnt from his Russian literature teacher (from the biography)

"I also learned an important lesson from my tutorials in Russian literature. My tutor said that what I was writing was good but it was clear from my essays that I tried to recall and repeat the thoughts of famous writers and literature critics, not trusting my own judgement, afraid that my own thoughts were not interesting, important or correct enough. Her advice was to try and explain my own opinions and ideas and to use those authoritative phrases only occasionally, to support and strengthen my writing. This simple advice was crucial for me – it changed the way I wrote. Years later I noticed that I was better at explaining my thoughts in writing than my fellow students."

Andre Geim on solving problems

 Andre Geim explains in his autobiography as follow.

"We solved many problems from old exam papers either from Phystech or, even harder, from international Olympiads. But even more helpful was the way he taught me to deal with physics problems: it is much easier to solve a problem if you first guess possible answers. Most problems at Phystech level require understanding of more than one area of physics and usually involve several logical steps. For example, in the case of a five-step solution, the possibilities for dealing with the problem quickly diverge and it may take many attempts before you get to the final answer. If, however, you try to solve the same problem from both ends, guessing two or three plausible answers, the space of possibilities and logical steps is much reduced. This is the way I learned to think then and I am still using it in my research every day, trying to build all the logical steps between what I have and what I think may be the end result of a particular project. After a couple of months, my tutor no longer asked me to write up a solution. Instead, I just explained verbally the way I would solve a particular problem – all the logical steps required to get to its end without describing routine details. This allowed us to go through the problems at lightning speed."