This is a popular review of some recent investigations of the Kondo effect in a variety of mesoscopic systems. After a brief introduction, experiments are described where a scanning tunneling microscope measures the surroundings of a magnetic impurity on a metal surface. In another set of experiments, Kondo effect creates a number of characteristic features in the electron transport through small electronic devices -- semiconductor quantum dots or single-molecule transistors which can be tuned by applying appropriate gate voltages. The article contains 5 color figures, photo of Jun Kondo, but no equations.
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