Scoffed Crystal Work of Israeli Scientist Wins Chemistry Nobel 2011

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2011 was awarded to Daniel Shechtman, Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel, and his winning discovery has fundamentally altered how chemists conceive of solid matter.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced the award Oct. 5 for Shechtman's discovery of quasicrystals, a never before seen structure where atoms formed a regular pattern that is never repeated, the academy said in a statement.

However, the configuration found in quasicrystals was considered impossible, and Dan Shechtman had to fight a fierce battle against established science.

On the morning of 8 April 1982, an image counter to the laws of nature appeared in Shechtman's electron microscope. In all solid matter, atoms were believed to be packed inside crystals in symmetrical patterns that were repeated periodically over and over again. For scientists, this repetition was required in order to obtain a crystal.

Shechtman's image, however, showed that the atoms in his crystal were packed in a pattern that could not be repeated. His discovery was extremely controversial. In the course of defending his findings, he was asked to leave his research group. However, his battle eventually forced scientists to reconsider their conception of the very nature of matter.

Periodic 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.

When scientists describe Shechtman's quasicrystals, they use a concept that comes from mathematics and art: the golden ratio. This number had already caught the interest of mathematicians in Ancient Greece, as it often appeared in geometry. In quasicrystals, for instance, the ratio of various distances between atoms is related to the golden mean.

Following Shechtman's discovery, scientists have produced other kinds of quasicrystals in the lab and discovered naturally occurring quasicrystals in mineral samples from a Russian river. A Swedish company has also found quasicrystals in a certain form of steel, where the crystals reinforce the material like armor. Scientists are currently experimenting with using quasicrystals in different products such as frying pans and diesel engines.