| Dan Shechtman דן שכטמן |
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| Born | January 24, 1941 Tel Aviv, Israel |
| Residence | Israel |
| Citizenship | Israel |
| Fields | Materials Science |
| Institutions | Wright Patterson Air Force Base Johns Hopkins University NIST Iowa State University Technion - Israel Institute of Technology |
| Alma mater | Technion - Israel Institute of Technology |
| Known for | Quasicrystals |
| Notable awards | Wolf Prize in Physics (1998) Israel Prize (1999) Nobel Prize in Chemistry (2011) |
Dan Shechtman (Hebrew: דן שכטמן) (born January 24, 1941 in Tel Aviv)[1] 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.[2] He was awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for "the discovery of quasicrystals".[3]
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Dan Shechtman was born in Tel Aviv, Mandate Palestine. He 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.[4][5] They have a son Yoav Shechtman (a PhD student in physics) 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).[6][7]
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,[1] 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, 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.[8][9]
Shechtman experienced several years of hostility toward his non-periodic interpretation (no less a figure than Linus Pauling said "There is no such thing as quasicrystals, only quasi-scientists."[11]). 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[12] (see the historical notes). The head of Shechtman's research group told him to "go back and read the textbook" and then "asked him to leave for 'bringing disgrace' on the team." Shechtman felt rejected.[11]Later, other scientists began to confirm and accept empirical findings of the existence of quasicrystals.[13][14]
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."[11] 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.
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.[15] [16]
The prize is worth 10-million swedish Krona ($1.5-million).[11]
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