Andre Geim, a professor at the University of Manchester, who shares this year's $1.6 million prize with colleague Konstantin Novoselov, said the Nobel committee was out of touch, and dismissed its tribute to the jailed Chinese dissident as patronising.
"Look at the people who give this Nobel prize," Professor Geim said. "They are retired Norwegian politicians who have spent all their careers in a safe environment, in an oil-rich modern country. They try to extend their views of the world, how the world should work and how democracy works in another country. It's very, very patronising -- they have not lived in these countries.
