Dan Shechtman (Hebrew: דן שכטמן; born January 24, 1941) is the Philip Tobias Professor
of Materials Science at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, an Associate of the
US Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory, and Professor of Materials Science at Iowa
State University. 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. Shechtman was awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
for the discovery of quasicrystals, making him one of six Israelis who have won the Nobel
Prize in Chemistry.
== Biography == Dan Shechtman was born in 1941 in Tel Aviv,
in what was then Mandatory Palestine; the city became part of the new state of Israel
in 1948. He grew up in Petah Tikva and Ramat Gan. His grandparents had immigrated to Palestine
during the Second Aliyah (1904–1914) and founded a printing house. As a child Shechtman
was fascinated by Jules Verne's The Mysterious Island (1874), which he read many times. His
childhood dream was to become an engineer like the main protagonist, Cyrus Smith.
„I thought that was the best thing a person could do. The engineer in the book knows mechanics
and physics, and he creates a whole way of life on the island out of nothing. I wanted
to be like that.“ Shechtman is married to Prof. Tzipora Shechtman, Head of the Department
of Counseling and Human Development at Haifa University, and author of two books on psychotherapy.
They have a son Yoav Shechtman (a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of W. E. Moerner) and
three daughters: Tamar Finkelstein (an organizational psychologist at the Israeli police leadership
center), Ella Shechtman-Cory (a PhD in clinical psychology), and Ruth Dougoud-Nevo (also a
PhD in clinical psychology). He is an atheist.
== Academic career ==
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,
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. During
this study he discovered the Icosahedral Phase which opened the new field of quasiperiodic
crystals. In 1992–1994 he was on sabbatical at National
Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), where he studied the effect of the defect
structure of CVD diamond on its growth and properties. Shechtman's Technion research
is conducted in the Louis Edelstein Center, and in the Wolfson Centre which is headed
by him. He served on several Technion Senate Committees and headed one of them.
Shechtman joined the Iowa State faculty in 2004. He currently spends about five months
a year in Ames on a part-time appointment.Since 2014 he has been the head of the International
Scientific Council of Tomsk Polytechnic University.
== Work on quasicrystals ==
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 a couple of days later "asked him to leave for 'bringing disgrace' on the
team." Shechtman felt dejected. On publication of his paper, 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. A quasiperiodic crystal, or, in short, quasicrystal,
is a structure that is ordered but not periodic. A quasicrystalline pattern can continuously
fill all available space, but it lacks translational symmetry. "Aperiodic mosaics, such as those
found in the medieval Islamic mosaics of the Alhambra palace in Spain and the Darb-i Imam
shrine in Iran, have helped scientists understand what quasicrystals look like at the atomic
level. In those mosaics, as in quasicrystals, the patterns are regular -- they follow mathematical
rules -- but they never repeat themselves.""An intriguing feature of such patterns, [which
are] also found in Arab mosaics, is that the mathematical constant known as the Greek letter
tau [sic], or the "golden ratio", occurs over and over again. Underlying it is a sequence
worked out by Fibonacci in the 13th century, where each number is the sum of the preceding
two."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., but presently have no technological applications.
The Nobel prize was 10 million Swedish krona (approximately US$1.5 million).
== Presidential bid == On January 17, 2014, in an interview with
Israel's Channel One, Shechtman announced his candidacy for President of Israel. Shechtman
received the endorsement of the ten Members of Knesset required to run. In the elections,
held on 10 June 2014, he was awarded only one vote. This led Israeli press and Israeli
humorists to qualify Shechtman as "quasi-president" in reference to the "quasi-scientist" quote.
== Awards ==
2014 Fray International Sustainability Award, SIPS 2014
2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of quasicrystals
2008 European Materials Research Society (E-MRS) 25th Anniversary Award
2002 EMET Prize in Chemistry 2000 Muriel & David Jacknow Technion Award
for Excellence in Teaching 2000 Gregori Aminoff Prize of the Royal Swedish
Academy of Sciences 1999 Wolf Prize in Physics.
1998 Israel Prize, for Physics. 1993 Weizmann Science Award
1990 Rothschild Prize in Engineering 1988 New England Academic Award of the Technion
1988 International Award for New Materials of the American Physical Society
1986 Physics Award of the Friedenberg Fund for the Advancement of Science and Education
== Published works ==
Shechtman, D.; Blech, I.; Gratias, D.; Cahn, J. (1984). "Metallic Phase with Long-Range
Orientational Order and No Translational Symmetry". Physical Review Letters. 53 (20): 1951. Bibcode:1984PhRvL..53.1951S.
doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.53.1951. Swartzendruber, L.; Shechtman, D.; Bendersky,
L.; Cahn, J. (1985). "Nuclear γ-ray resonance observations in an aluminum-based icosahedral
quasicrystal". Physical Review B. 32 (2): 1383. Bibcode:1985PhRvB..32.1383S. doi:10.1103/PhysRevB.32.1383.
Cahn, John W.; Gratias, Denis; Shechtman, Dan (1986). "Pauling's model not universally
accepted". Nature. 319 (6049): 102. Bibcode:1986Natur.319..102C. doi:10.1038/319102a0.
Shechtman, Dan (1988). "The Icosahedral Quasiperiodic Phase". Physica Scripta. T23: 49. Bibcode:1988PhST...23...49S.
doi:10.1088/0031-8949/1988/T23/008. Cahn, John W.; Shechtman, Dan; Gratias, Denis
(1986). "Indexing of icosahedral quasiperiodic crystals". Journal of Materials Research.
1: 13. Bibcode:1986JMatR...1...13C. doi:10.1557/JMR.1986.0013.
== See also ==
List of Israel Prize recipients List of Israeli Nobel laureates
List of Jewish Nobel laureates Science and technology in Israel
== References ==
== Further reading == D. P. DiVincenzo and P. J. Steinhardt, eds.
1991. Quasicrystals: The State of the Art. Directions in Condensed Matter Physics, Vol
11. ISBN 981-02-0522-8. T. Janssen. 2007. Quasicrystals: Comparative
dynamics. Nature Materials, Vol 6., 925-926.
== External links == Nobel Laureates from Technion - Israel Institute
of Technology. Story of quasicrystals as told by Shechtman
to APS News in 2002. Biography/CV Page – Technion
TechnionLIVE e-newsletter Dan Shechtman (Iowa State faculty page)
2012 interview with The Times of Israel