Dr. Dan Shechtman is a distinguished Israeli scientist renowned for his groundbreaking contributions to materials science and crystallography. He currently serves as the Philip Tobias Professor of Materials Science at the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, where he has been a faculty member since 1975. After earning his B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering in 1966 and M.Sc. in Materials Engineering in 1968, he completed his Ph.D. in Materials Engineering from the Technion in 1972. His early career included significant research at the Aerospace Research Laboratories at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, where he honed his expertise in transmission electron microscopy, a skill that would prove crucial to his later discovery.
Dr. Shechtman's most revolutionary contribution came on April 8, 1982, when while on sabbatical at the U.S. National Bureau of Standards, he discovered the icosahedral phase in aluminum-manganese alloys, which opened the entirely new field of quasiperiodic crystals, now known as quasicrystals. This discovery fundamentally challenged the long-held belief that crystals could only exhibit periodic, repeating patterns with rotational symmetries limited to 2, 3, 4, and 6-fold axes. His meticulous use of transmission electron microscopy allowed him to demonstrate that the observed tenfold symmetry was not due to twinning but represented a new form of atomic structure. This paradigm-shifting finding revolutionized the understanding of solid matter and expanded the definition of what constitutes a crystal in the field of materials science.
For this transformative discovery, Dr. Shechtman was awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, becoming one of six Israelis to receive this prestigious honor in the field. His work has had profound implications across multiple scientific disciplines, with quasicrystals now finding applications in diverse areas from steel armor to non-stick cookware. Despite initial skepticism and resistance from the scientific community, including from prominent figures like Linus Pauling, Shechtman's unwavering commitment to his findings ultimately led to a fundamental shift in crystallographic principles. Today, his legacy continues to inspire new generations of materials scientists, and his discovery remains one of the most significant breakthroughs in the understanding of solid-state matter in the 20th century.
