An Israeli scientist, Daniel Shechtman, has won this year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry for discovering a material, quasicrystals, in which atoms were packed together in a well-defined pattern that never repeats.
Such regular but non-repeating patterns, defined by precise rules, have been known in Mathematics since antiquity and are found in mosaics of medieval Islamic tiles, but it was thought impossible in the packing of atoms.
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Shechtman, 70, a professor of materials science at Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, discovered the same type of structure while studying a metal mix of aluminium and manganese. His notebook recorded the exact date: April 8, 1982. He concluded that science was wrong – but it would take years for him and other researchers to prove that he was right.
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Scientists believed that crystals in materials all contained repeating patterns, and Shechtman took years to persuade others. During the announcement, the Nobel committee noted that one colleague said, “Go away, Danny” and that he was even asked to leave his research group.
Quasicrystals had since been found in many other materials, including a naturally occurring mineral from a Russian river. Despite the initial reluctance in the scientific community to accept his discovery, it “fundamentally altered how chemists conceive of solid matter,” the Nobel academy.
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Recent Nobel prizes have generally split credit for scientific advances among two or three people, but this year’s chemistry prize and accompanying 10 million Swedish kronor ($1.4 million about N224 million) went to a single scientist. ?Shechtman is an Associate of the United States Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory, and a professor at Iowa State University.
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Quasicrystals have been produced in laboratories and a Swedish company found them in one of the most durable kinds of steel, which is now used in products such as razor blades and thin needles made specifically for eye surgery, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said. Quasicrystals are also being studied for use in new materials that covert heat to electricity. They were first discovered in nature in Russia in 2009.
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Israeli President, Shimon Peres, who shared the Nobel Peace Prize as Israel’s foreign minister in 1994, congratulated Shechtman and said he was the 10th Israeli to win a Nobel.
“I would like to salute you and tell you how proud we are of you and what a present you have given us today,” he told Shechtman in a conversation broadcast live on TV.
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