Dan Shechtman's Accomplishments

This year was truly a year of a challenge. Challenge of establishment, that is. The most highlighted perhaps are the ongoing variations of Occupy Wall Street movements, where for many months now, protesters are still expressing their strong dissatisfaction with the current socioeconomic paradigm. Yet another type of “protester” was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry this year. Dr. Dan Shechtman is that protester, and his challenge is absolutely fascinating.
It all began on the early morning of April 8,
At some point, as he recalled in one interview, he was given a textbook on crystallography with a suggestion to read it. “I do not need to read it, I teach this book, I know what is in it” – he replied. But he was eventually distanced by many colleagues and brutally criticized by highly prominent chemists. Despite that, he ultimately stood by his discovery and fought for the
And sure enough, disbelievers were eventually baptized by a growing number of crystallographers who observed the same fivefold symmetry as Dan Shechtman did in April 1982. After a large enough number of chemists and physicists were convinced, The International Union of Crystallography expanded the definition of a crystal to include these newly discovered quasiperiodic crystals. And almost 17 years after the discovery, The Nobel Prize committee awarded the highest scientific honor to this determined scientist who did not give up on the truth and fought for his controversial