Preface

I do not think that I need to explain, in the preface to a book that is all aboutgraphene, what graphene is and why it is important. After the Nobel Prize forphysics in 2010, everybody should have heard something about graphene. I doneed, however, to explain why I wrote this book and what is special aboutit.

I hope it will not be considered a disclosure of insider information if I tellyou that Andre Geim is a bit sarcastic (especially with theoreticians). Everytime I mentioned that I was somewhat busy writing a book on graphene, he alwaysreplied ‘Go to amazon.com and search for“graphene”.’ Indeed, there are many books on graphene, manymore reviews and infinitely many collections of papers and conferenceproceedings (well, not really infinitely many . . . in the maintext I will use the mathematical terminology in a more rigorous way, I promise).Why, nevertheless, has this book been written and why may it be worthwhile foryou to read it?

Of course, this is a personal view of the field. I do love it, and it has been mymain scientific activity during the last seven years, from 2004 when graphenestarted to be the subject of intensive and systematic investigations. Luckily, Iwas involved in this development almost from the very beginning. It was afantastic experience to watch a whole new world coming into being and toparticipate in the development of a new language for this new world. I wouldlike to try to share this experience with the readers of this book.