(2011) Dan Shechtman
Dan Shechtman is the Philip Tobias Professor of Materials Science at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. On April 8, 1982, while on sabbatical at the U.S. National Bureau of Standards in Washington, D.C., Shechtman discovered the icosahedral phase, which opened the new field of quasiperiodic crystals. He was awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for \"the discovery of quasicrystals\". Shechtman is the fourth Israeli to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in under a decade. Shechtman was born January 24, 1941 in Tel Aviv, British Mandate of Palestine. After receiving his Ph.D. in Materials Engineering from the Technion in 1972, where he also obtained his B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering in 1966 and M.Sc. in Materials Engineering in 1968,[1] Prof. Shechtman was an NRC fellow at the Aerospace Research Laboratories at Wright Patterson AFB, Ohio, where he studied for three years the microstructure and physical metallurgy of titanium aluminides. In 1975 he joined the department of materials engineering at Technion. In 1981–1983 he was on Sabbatical at Johns Hopkins University, where he studied rapidly solidified aluminum transition metal alloys, in a joint program with NBS. From the day Shechtman published his findings on quasicrystals in 1984 to the day Linus Pauling died (1994), Shechtman experienced hostility from him toward the non-periodic interpretation. \"For a long time it was me against the world,\" he said. \"I was a subject of ridicule and lectures about the basics of crystallography. The leader of the opposition to my findings was the two-time Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling, the idol of the American Chemical Society and one of the most famous scientists in the world. For years, \'til his last day, he fought against quasi-periodicity in crystals. He was wrong, and after a while, I enjoyed every moment of this scientific battle, knowing that he was wrong.\" Linus Pauling is noted saying \"There is no such thing as quasicrystals, only quasi-scientists.\" Pauling was apparently unaware of a paper in 1981 by H. Kleinert and K. Maki which had pointed out the possibility of a non-periodic Icosahedral Phase in quasicrystals (see the historical notes). The head of Shechtman\'s research group told him to \"go back and read the textbook\" and then \"asked him to leave for \'bringing disgrace\' on the team.\" Shechtman felt rejected. Later, other scientists began to confirm and accept empirical findings of the existence of quasicrystals. The Nobel Committee at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said that \"his discovery was extremely controversial,\" but that his work \"eventually forced scientists to reconsider their conception of the very nature of matter.\" Through Shechtman\'s discovery, several other groups were able to form similar quasicrystals, finding these materials to have low thermal and electrical conductivity, while possessing high structural stability. Quasicrystals have also been found naturally. Quasicrystalline materials could be used in a large number of applications, including the formation of durable steel used for fine instrumentation, and non-stick insulation for electrical wires and cooking equipment.
