Dan Shechtman

Shechtman was born in Tel Aviv on January 24, 1941.[2] His childhood interest in mechanical engineering was encouraged by his grandfather, who taught him rational thought and gave him a magnifying glass for his seventh birthday.[5] He used the glass to examine plants and insects in the open fields near his home in Ramat Gan.[5]

After military service, Shechtman enrolled at the Technion–Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, where he earned a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering in 1966.[3] His decision to pursue further study followed difficulty finding employment during a period of austerity in Israel.[5] He returned to the Technion for a master's degree, became interested in academic life, and continued toward a doctorate.[5] He completed his master's degree in 1968 and his doctorate in materials engineering in 1972.[3]

Shechtman later recalled that gaining admission to the Technion had not been easy and that he had struggled as a student.[4] In describing that experience, he remembered an unknown student writing “A city without mercy” on the university gate.[4] His subsequent connection with the institution extended from his undergraduate and postgraduate education to a faculty career and the teaching of technological entrepreneurship.[4][3]

From 1972 to 1975, following his doctorate, Shechtman worked as a postdoctoral associate at the Aerospace Research Laboratories at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio.[6][3] As an NRC fellow there, he studied the microstructure and physical metallurgy of titanium aluminides.[3] In 1975 he joined the Technion's Department of Materials Engineering as a lecturer, beginning the faculty career that eventually brought him the rank of distinguished professor.[3][7]

He became a professor at the Technion in 1984 and was appointed Philip Tobias Professor of Materials Science in 1986.[6][7] Alongside his work in Haifa, he maintained academic appointments in the United States: he was a visiting professor at Johns Hopkins University from 1981 to 1997 and at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, from 1997 to 2004.[6] From 2004, he was a professor of materials science and engineering at Iowa State University.[6][8] At the time of his Nobel Prize in 2011, his affiliations included the Technion, Iowa State, and the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory, where he was an associate.[1]

The research that led to quasicrystals took place during a 1981–83 sabbatical associated with Johns Hopkins University and the National Bureau of Standards.[3] In 1982, at the bureau in Gaithersburg, Maryland, Shechtman was investigating aluminum-iron and aluminum-manganese alloys within a research program sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.[6] His work involved rapidly solidified aluminum transition-metal alloys, in which he identified the structure subsequently described as the icosahedral phase.[3]

Shechtman and his colleagues mixed aluminum and manganese in an approximate six-to-one proportion, melted the mixture, and rapidly cooled it.[6] Examination of the solidified alloy with an electron microscope revealed an unexpected fivefold symmetry.[6] A rotation of 72 degrees reproduced the same structure, yet the arrangement was aperiodic: it did not repeat in the manner expected of ordinary crystals.[6] In his Nobel award remarks, Shechtman dated the observation to April 8, 1982, and recalled that he had been alone in the electron-microscope room when he discovered the icosahedral phase.[4]

The essential distinction was between order and repetition: the atoms formed an ordered arrangement without the regular periodic repetition associated with ordinary crystals.[9] Quasicrystalline patterns are deterministic, meaning that they are specified by rules, but remain nonrepeating.[9] Their long-range order distinguishes them from amorphous solids, while fivefold symmetry belongs among the symmetries forbidden in periodic crystals.[9] Shechtman's finding therefore identified a form of atomic organization that combined properties previously regarded as incompatible within a crystal.[6][9]

His findings were published in 1984, two years after the original observation.[2] Later in 1984, physicists Paul Steinhardt and Dov Levine coined the term “quasicrystal” to describe the discovery.[6] In 1987, researchers in France and Japan produced quasicrystals large enough to examine using X-rays, providing further support for the findings originally obtained through electron microscopy.[6] The discovery opened the field of quasiperiodic crystals, and the International Union of Crystallography subsequently adopted a new definition of a crystal.[3]

Shechtman received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2011 for his discovery of quasicrystals.[1][8] By the time of the award, the discovery had opened a research field involving thousands of scientists and had fundamentally changed scientific thinking about the structure of materials.[7] The award recognized the observation of ordered, nonrepeating atomic arrangements that had challenged the earlier conception of crystalline matter.[1][8]

Shechtman learned of the honor in a telephone call from the president of the Swedish Academy of Sciences and was asked not to tell anyone before the official announcement.[10] He said that he told only his wife, Tzipi, and recalled that “after the official announcement all hell broke loose.”[10] The announced financial award was $1.5 million.[1]

At a Technion press conference following the announcement, Shechtman said he felt that he represented an entire research field rather than only his own achievement.[7] He emphasized that thousands of scientists were working on quasicrystals and that their research had advanced the field.[7] He thanked Tzipi, their children and grandchildren, and colleagues who had supported the early work.[7] Among those he acknowledged was Professor Ilan Blech, who had encouraged publication and co-signed the first paper in the field.[7] He also thanked John Cahn, his colleague at the National Bureau of Standards.[7]

The Nobel award brought public recognition in Israel and among Jewish communities abroad.[1] In a congratulatory telephone call, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Shechtman, “Every Israeli is happy today and every Jew in the world is proud.”[1] At the time, Shechtman combined his distinguished professorship at the Technion with his professorship at Iowa State University and his association with Ames Laboratory.[1]

His Nobel remarks returned to the scientific implications of the discovery rather than treating the original observation as an isolated achievement.[4] He described the discovery and the research that followed as producing a paradigm shift in crystallography and a new definition of crystal.[4] Calling that definition “beautiful and humble and open to further discoveries,” he connected the episode with a broader statement about scientific practice: “A humble scientist is a good scientist.”[4]

Before the Nobel Prize, Shechtman had received a succession of Israeli and international scientific honors.[3] These included the Israel Prize in physics in 1998, the Wolf Prize in physics in 1999, the Gregori Aminoff Prize in 2000, and the Emet Prize in 2002.[3][7] His election to scientific academies included the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities in 1996, the American National Academy of Engineering in 2000, and the European Academy of Sciences in 2004.[3]

After becoming a full professor, Shechtman organized a Technion course on technological entrepreneurship.[11] The course brought students into contact with entrepreneurs and with people involved in start-up financing and professional services.[11] Its guest speakers included successful and unsuccessful entrepreneurs, alongside legal, business, and marketing experts.[4] In a 2013 account, Shechtman said that it had reached 600 students and become the largest class at the Technion.[11]

By 2011, he had taught the entrepreneurship course for more than 25 years, and it had been attended by 10,000 graduates.[4] A 2017 account described approximately 30 years of teaching and reported that one quarter of the course's graduates had started businesses.[12] The course thus formed a sustained part of his Technion career alongside his scientific research and materials-science appointments.[6][12]

Shechtman advocated entrepreneurship education beyond the immediate needs of individual start-ups.[4] Speaking at a forum on innovation management, he argued that such education was vital to countries' future as natural resources were depleted.[4] His teaching drew on the experience of people whose businesses had failed as well as those whose ventures had succeeded, with the course also exposing students to the professional services involved in building a business.[4]

His educational activity also extended to younger children and school students.[12][3] He worked with Haifa's mayor to establish scientific kindergartens and was involved in science education in Israeli schools.[12][3] In 2017, he said that he hoped to be remembered for his advocacy of science education and technological entrepreneurship.[12] This work accompanied, rather than replaced, the university teaching for which he had become known.[12]

In 2016, Shechtman was helping to develop science and innovation studies for ORT Israel Sci-Tech Schools.[13] The program was then operating in eight schools and involved ninth- and tenth-grade students in year-long projects.[13] Those projects were built around community needs and research questions, with the possibility that students could develop their proposed solutions into a patent or a start-up.[13] At that time, Shechtman again described his Technion technological-entrepreneurship course as an undertaking he had run for about 30 years.[13]

Shechtman also sought a formal public role outside academia. In 2014, he announced that he was running for president of Israel.[14][2] He said his desire to seek the office came from being a Zionist and continued teaching at the Technion during this period.[14]

Shechtman's discovery opened the field of quasiperiodic crystals and contributed to the adoption of a new definition of crystal by the International Union of Crystallography.[3] Its central scientific consequence was the recognition that long-range atomic order need not depend on periodic repetition.[9] The quasicrystalline arrangement could be specified by rules without repeating, distinguishing it both from the repeating organization of ordinary crystals and from the lack of long-range order in amorphous solids.[9]

The discovery changed the understanding of solid matter by showing that an ordered atomic arrangement could possess a symmetry excluded from periodic crystals.[6][9] The fivefold structure observed in Shechtman's alloy was not simply another example of the familiar repeating patterns: its order was aperiodic.[6] That combination became the basis for a field in which thousands of scientists were working by the time of his Nobel Prize.[7]

By 2011, hundreds of materials with quasicrystalline structures had been found.[15] Their significance extended beyond the original aluminum-manganese alloy and the conceptual questions raised by its electron-microscope pattern.[6][15] Potential applications included protective alloys and coatings, while quasicrystals found in a type of steel reinforced the material.[15] Researchers were also experimenting with applications in products such as diesel engines and frying pans.[15] These were reported as potential or experimental uses, alongside the already established importance of the discovery for understanding atomic structure.[15]

Shechtman's own account of the achievement emphasized the work that followed his first observation.[4][7] At the Nobel announcement press conference, he spoke of representing the wider research field and acknowledged the contributions of thousands of scientists.[7] In his award remarks, he described the resulting definition of crystal as open to further discoveries.[4] His statement that “A humble scientist is a good scientist” accompanied his description of the change in crystallography brought about by the discovery and its subsequent development.[4]

His educational work formed another part of his public contribution.[12] It ranged from scientific kindergartens and school projects to a long-running university course that introduced students to entrepreneurs, financing, and the professional services involved in establishing businesses.[12][11] By 2017, he explicitly hoped that his advocacy of science education and technological entrepreneurship would be part of how he was remembered.[12] His career therefore encompassed both the investigation of atomic structure and sustained efforts to encourage scientific learning and business creation in Israel.[12][7]

Shechtman's original findings met strong opposition because fivefold symmetry and an aperiodic structure were considered impossible for crystals.[7][10] Many researchers regarded the underlying questions of crystal structure as having been settled since the 1890s.[6] During the dispute, he was asked to leave his research group at the National Bureau of Standards, and his findings did not appear in print until 1984.[10][2] Recalling the opposition, he said, “For a long time it was me against the world.”[16]

Linus Pauling was a prominent opponent, dismissing the discovery with the remark, “There are no quasicrystals, only quasi-scientists.”[6] Pauling proposed that some apparent quasicrystals could instead be ordinary crystals with twinning defects.[9] Many crystallographers were also reluctant to accept findings produced through electron microscopy rather than the X-ray methods more familiar to them.[6] The production of larger quasicrystals in France and Japan in 1987 allowed X-ray examination and supported Shechtman's results.[6]

The broader explanation of why quasicrystalline order forms remains unresolved.[9] However, some quasicrystalline compounds can be grown slowly in thermodynamic equilibrium and exhibit long-range order that twinning does not account for.[9] The continuing question of how such order forms is distinct from the experimental support for the ordered, nonperiodic structures identified through Shechtman's work.[6][9]