the jewish daily forward has this to say about andre geim as of press time russian jew andre geim shared this year s nobel prize in physics with konstantin novoselov the linking above to our own who is a jew article i don't think is the only source for defining whether or not an individual is jewish i find the following at the fairly reliable judaism website a jew is any person whose mother was a jew or any person who has gone through the formal process of conversion to judaism it is important to note that being a jew has nothing to do with what you believe or what you do the citation from the forward should be sufficient in and of itself to establish for our purposes in writing the article that geim would accurately be called a jew