An Israeli scientist won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for changing the prevailing views about the atomic structure of matter with his discovery of quasicrystals.
Dan Shechtman, 70, of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, will get the 10 million-kronor award, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said at a press conference in Stockholm today.
Shechtman persevered in the face of doubt and ridicule in describing a form of crystal whose patterns are regular but never repeat, a notion that shattered scientists' belief that all crystals consist of recurring patterns. The structure endows quasicrystals with unique properties that may lead to better frying pans, LED lights and diesel engines, the academy said.
"His discovery of quasicrystals revealed a new principle for packing of atoms and molecules," said Lars Thelander, who leads the Nobel Committee for Chemistry at academy. "This led to a paradigm shift within chemistry."
Quasicrystals look like the aperiodic mosaics found on the walls of the Alhambra Palace near Granada, Spain. They are hard but fracture easily, like glass, and have non-stick surfaces.
Shechtman was working at the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology when he made his initial discovery. He had rapidly chilled a molten mixture of aluminum and manganese on the morning of April 8, 1982. It seemed strange, and when he examined it with his electron microscope, he couldn't believe what he saw: concentric circles, each made of 10 dots at the same distance from each other. The atoms were arranged in a way that flouted the laws of nature, the Nobel committee wrote in a document describing Shechtman's achievements.
"There can be no such creature," he said to himself in Hebrew. In his notebook, he wrote three question marks, according to the Nobel committee document.
Scientists greeted Shechtman's discovery with resistance, even ridicule, the committee said. The head of his laboratory suggested he read a textbook on crystallography. When Shechtman persisted in his experiments, he was asked to leave the research group.
"He's an independent thinker, determined and brave," Yoav Shechtman, one of the scientist's four children and a Ph.D student in physics, said in a telephone interview. Reached on the phone, Shechtman himself said he couldn't comment until a press conference arranged for 2 p.m. local time in Haifa.
Shechtman turned back to Technion, where he had earned his doctorate in 1972, for advice about his findings, contacting a colleague there named Ilan Blech. After consulting other scientists in the U.S. and France, Shechtman published the data in November 1984.
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