The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2011

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2011 to

Daniel Shechtman
Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel

“for the discovery of quasicrystals”.

A remarkable mosaic of atoms
In quasicrystals, we find the fascinating mosaics of the Arabic world
reproduced at the level of atoms: regular patterns that never repeat themselves.
However, the configuration found in quasicrystals was considered impossible,
and Daniel Shechtman had to fight a fierce battle against established science.
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2011 has fundamentally altered how chemists conceive of solid matter.

On the morning of 8 April 1982, an image counter to the laws of nature appeared in Daniel 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. Such a pattern was considered just as impossible as creating a football
using only six-cornered polygons, when a sphere needs both five- and six-cornered polygons.
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.

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.

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.

______________________________________________________________

Daniel Shechtman, Israeli citizen. Born 1941 in Tel Aviv, Israel.
Ph.D. 1972 from Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel.
Distinguished Professor, The Philip Tobias Chair,
Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel.
http://materials.technion.ac.il/shechtman.html

Prize amount: SEK 10 million
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Contacts:
Erik Huss, Press Officer, Phone +46 8 673 95 44, +46 70 673 96 50, erik.huss@kva.se
Ann Fernholm, Editor, Phone +46 70 750 22 16, ann.fernholm@kva.se

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