Dan Shechtman: The Nobel Prize Winner in Chemistry 2011

Dan Shechtman Professor of Materials Science has been awarded the Nobel Prizes in Chemistry 2011 for the discovery of quasicrystals.


Dan is an Ames Laboratory associate scientist, an Lowa State professor of materials science and engineering and the Philip Tobias Professor of Materials Science at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. He is currently at the Technion in Haifa, Israel.

Shechtman said, "A good scientist is a humble and listening scientist and not one that is sure 100 percent in what he read in the textbooks."

Quasicrystals are substances whose molecular structure is ordered in a form similar to crystals but is not periodic. Such materials can naturally form into geometrical solids just as crystals can, but the solids formed from crystals are always shapes that can tessellate space, such as a cube. Quasicrystals on the other hand can form shapes such as a dodecahedron.

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry:

Daniel Schechtman:

NAME	Daniel Schechtman
BORN	January 24, 1941
AGE	70 years
NATIONALITY	Israel
ACADEMIC BACKGROUND	B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering from Technion in 1966
	M.Sc. in Materials Engineering from Technion in 1968
	Ph.D. in Materials Engineering from the Technion in 1972
EXPERTISE	Materials Science
AFFILIATION	Technion: Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel
CONTRIBUTION	Microstructure and mechanical properties of titanium aluminides.
	Microstructure and properties of rapidly solidified metallic alloys.
	The discovery of the Icosahedral Phase, the first quasi-periodic phase, its crystallography and some of its properties.
	Nucleation and growth of CVD diamond films.
	Development of new magnesium alloys.
AWARDS	(1986 )Physics Award of the Friedenberg Fund for the Advancement of Science and Education
	(1988) International Award for New Materials of the American Physical Society
	(1988) New England Academic Award of the Technion
	(1990) Rothschild Prize in Engineering
	(1993) Weizmann Science Award
	(1998) Israel Prize in Physics
	(1999) Wolf Prize in Physics
	(2000) Gregori Aminoff Prize of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
	(2000) Muriel & David Jacknow Technion Award for Excellence in Teaching
	(2002) EMET Prize in Chemistry
	(2008) European Materials Research Society (E-MRS) 25th Anniversary Award
	Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2011
HONORS	(1996) Elected member of the Israel Academy of Sciences.
	(1997) Elected Honorary Member of MRSI (Materials Research Society of India)
	(1998) Elected Honorary Member of the Israel Society for Microscopy
	(1998) Elected Honorary Member of ISIS-Symmetry (International Society for Interdisciplinary sciences)
	(1999) Elected Honorary Member of the Israel Crystallographic Association
	(2000) Elected Honorary Member of the French Physical Society
	(2000) Elected member of the American National Academy of Engineering
	(2004) Elected member of the European Academy of Sciences
	(2005) Elected Honorary Member of the Japan Institute of Metals
PRIZE MOTIVATION	"for the discovery of quasicrystals"
Email	dannys@tx.technion.ac.il

Credit & Sources: Materials Engineering,nobelprize.org,wikipedia Thanks to all.