- Person
- Dan Shechtman
- Lived
- b. 1941
- Field
- Materials science
- From
- Israeli
The story
For most of the twentieth century, scientists agreed that a crystal is a solid whose atoms are arranged in a pattern that repeats over and over, like tiles on a floor. Mathematics showed that such patterns could have certain symmetries but never five-fold or ten-fold symmetry, just as a floor cannot be tiled with pentagons alone.
On the morning of April 8, 1982, Dan Shechtman, an Israeli materials scientist from the Technion on sabbatical at the US National Bureau of Standards, looked at a rapidly cooled alloy of aluminium and manganese in his electron microscope. The diffraction pattern showed circles of ten bright dots. He wrote in his notebook: “10 Fold???” The atoms were clearly ordered, but in a pattern that could not repeat. Mathematicians, including Roger Penrose, had already shown that surfaces can be tiled in ordered patterns that never repeat, much like the medieval Islamic mosaics of the Alhambra palace in Spain.
The scientific establishment rejected the finding. The head of his laboratory handed him a crystallography textbook and suggested he read it, and he was later asked to leave the research group. His first paper was rejected almost at once, and the double Nobel laureate Linus Pauling opposed the idea for years. Shechtman trusted his experiments. With colleagues he published the discovery in 1984, and other laboratories soon confirmed it. In 1992 the International Union of Crystallography changed its definition of a crystal, and natural quasicrystals were later found in a Russian mineral.
Quasicrystals are hard, slippery and poor conductors of heat. The Nobel committee noted that they strengthen a durable Swedish steel used in razor blades and fine needles for eye surgery, and that researchers are testing them in non-stick coatings, engine heat insulation, energy-saving LEDs and devices that turn waste heat into electricity. Shechtman received the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, and his story is now taught as a lesson in trusting evidence over authority.
Why it matters
Shechtman’s discovery opened a new class of materials used in tough specialty steel and being developed for coatings and energy technologies, and it showed the value of questioning accepted ideas.
About Dan Shechtman
Israeli materials scientist who discovered quasicrystals against fierce ridicule, rewrote the definition of a crystal, and taught entrepreneurship to some 10,000 engineers. Nobel Prize 2011.
More about Dan Shechtman
Sources
- Press release: The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2011 NobelPrize.org
- Popular information: The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2011 NobelPrize.org
- Dan Shechtman Wikipedia
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.