Nobel Prize Laureate Andre Geim has come to Moscow to give his support to Russia’s Education and Science Minister Dmitry Livanov in his struggle with Russian scientists and lawmakers.

      Geim attended a meeting of the Public Council of the Russian Education and Science Ministry where he expressed his opinion that Russian Academy of Sciences is reminiscent of “an old folks home” while university science looks like “a kindergarten,” stressing that it is time to start merging universities with RAS-affiliated institutes.

      Andre Geim also said he knows Livanov as a good scientist and administrator, but now the Minister has fallen out with everyone: universities, politicians, the Higher Certification Commission [VAK], the Russian Academy of Sciences and the media, just trying to change something.

      Dmitry Livanov has recently taken flak from both from representatives of so-called academic science and a number of politicians who are pressing for the minister’s resignation. Members of Livanov’s inner circle link the attacks on him to the ongoing campaign to crack down on fake PhDs and plagiarism in research projects as well as his position on the need to reform the Russian Academy of Sciences.

      Sir Andre Geim, a Russian-born Dutch-British physicist, was awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics jointly with Konstantin Novoselov for his work on grapheme.