The Minister of Science - his counterpart at the Technion commented on the win * In this article also the Technion's official announcement
The Minister of Science and Technology, Prof. Daniel Hershkowitz, his Technion colleague and close friend, congratulated the award, saying today: "The win is not only an amazing personal achievement for Prof. Shechtman, but further evidence that the State of Israel is a scientific and technological powerhouse. As someone who knows him and his skills, his winning the Nobel is not surprising."
The Chairman of the Committee for Planning and Budgeting in the Council for Higher Education, Prof. Manuel Trachtenberg congratulated Prof. Dan Shechtman from the Technion for winning the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Prof. Trachtenberg said that the win is further proof of the enormous importance of investing in education, higher education and research, which are the source of the only comparative advantage of the State of Israel, i.e., the fine human capital, creativity and scientific and technological innovation.
Prof. Trachtenberg added that by winning the coveted prize, Prof. Shechtman joins a very distinguished line of Israeli researchers who have made far-reaching contributions to science, society and human progress, and for that we are proud as a nation.
The official announcement of the Technion
Professor Dan Schechtman from the Faculty of Materials Engineering receives the award for his sensational discovery: quasi-periodic crystals
Research professor Dan Shechtman from the Technion's Faculty of Materials Engineering won the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of the quasi-periodic crystals in the second half of 1982.
The discovery was at the NBS laboratories in Maryland, USA, where Professor Shechtman was invited by Dr. John Kahn, who visited the Technion in 1980. In those days, Professor Shechtman was engaged in the production of metallic materials by rapid solidification. What he saw in the penetrating electron microscope that day was electron diffraction that indicated that the crystal under examination was a crystal with rotational symmetry of five - a symmetry that was considered impossible in periodic crystals.
In 1912, the German scientist von Lava confirmed by X-ray diffraction that most solids have an ordered and periodic crystal structure, from then until 1982, during seventy years in which hundreds of thousands of different crystals were studied, no non-periodic crystals were reported. Under these circumstances, a paradigm was established that defines the crystal as ordered and periodic and states that periodic crystals can have rotational symmetry of 2,3,4 or 6, not 5 and not a number greater than 6. On this basis grew the theory of crystals (crystallography), which until the XNUMXs was a "closed science", whose people do not expect revolutionary discoveries.
Following the discovery, Professor Shechtman carried out a series of experiments, with the aim of finding out what causes the pentagonal symmetry. At first he thought it was a phenomenon called "twins". When he ruled out this possibility he realized that he had discovered new crystals, and later he found such crystals in three different materials.
Professor Shechtman finished his sabbatical year. When he returned to the Technion, he met Professor Ilan Belch, who was the only one who believed in his discovery, and even proposed a model explaining how such diffraction was obtained. In the summer of 1984, Professor Shechtman returned to Maryland and submitted a scientific article for publication, together with Professor Belch, that included the experimental part and the theoretical part, but the article was rejected.
The editors of the Journal of Applied Physics wrote: "The article will not interest physicists. We recommend sending it to a newspaper of metallurgists (metal researchers)". The article was indeed sent to a metallurgical newspaper - Metallurgical Transactions, which accepted it but announced that it would only be published within a year. Professor Shechtman showed the article to John Kahn, who suggested sending another, condensed article to the journal Physical Review Letters. Four scientists participated in the writing of the concise article - Shechtman, Belch, Kahan and the French scientist Dr. Denis Gratias. Dr. John Kahan's advice proved to be good, and the article was indeed published within a few weeks, in November 1984. Thus a new field of science was opened: quasi-periodic crystals.
The community of physicists raged, and the community of chemists and mathematicians followed suit. Dr. Shechtman's community of "believers" grew and grew, but it encountered resistance from the conservative crystallographer community, led by Professor Linus Pauling, the father of modern American chemistry and Nobel Prize laureate (twice). "Shechtman is talking nonsense," Pauling once said at a scientific conference, where Dr. Shechtman was also in the audience. "There is no such thing as quasi-crystals - there are only quasi-scientists". Before his death, Pauling remained the only one in the scientific world who refused to acknowledge Professor Shechtman's discovery.
Today Professor Shechtman is a research professor in the Faculty of Materials Engineering at the Technion and the University of Iowa in the USA, the recipient of many awards such as the Israel Prize,
Wolf Prize, Emet Prize and Aminoff Prize of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
He is a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Engineering in the USA.
Today it is already known about hundreds of materials that maintain the structure discovered by Professor Shechtman, and every year several national and international conferences are held on the subject.
40 scientific books were devoted to quasi-periodic crystals, and in many other books the chapter discussing the science of crystallography was updated. Following the discovery and confirmation, the International Association of Crystallographic Scientists fundamentally changed the definition of the crystal. In Israel, a name was attached to the material with the new structure - "Shechtmanit".
Basic Concepts
Below are basic explanations for some concepts that appear in the article:
Diffraction is the scattering of radiation as a result of interaction with matter.
Rotational symmetry means, simplistically, that if we rotate the body in question, we will see the same image again and again; For example, if we slowly rotate a spinning wheel with nothing written on its edges, we will see the same image four times, and then we will reach the starting point again - this is square rotational symmetry. Professor Shechtman's discovery is the existence of pentagonal symmetry in crystals.
A periodic crystal is characterized by the fact that it consists of a basic structural unit that repeats itself over and over again, like the hexagons in the honeycomb.
15 תגובות
And here is a video commemorating the announcement of the win
http://www.nobelprize.org/mediaplayer/index.php?id=1623
Professor Danny Shechtman tells his story:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZRTzOMHQ4s
It is impossible not to be impressed by his personal charm as well.
Personal excellence is not necessarily related to awards and recognition given for breakthroughs. In all fields and at all levels, personal excellence can express itself and create prosperity and development for many others. This is what the education system can cultivate and this is not what it does!!! On the contrary.
Even the great geniuses need some kind of supportive environment, but everything else really depends on such an environment.
In our country, especially, the loss is great because there are many talents and they simply leave. This is so outrageous!!!
sympathetic:
It is clear that persistence is very important in some cases (not so that the claim is accepted because all justified claims are probably accepted in the end) but so that this happens during the lifetime of the first claimant.
It is also clear that it is not always important (many Nobel prizes are based on discoveries that became accepted very quickly).
In general - the issue of stubbornness is of course only relevant to Nobel Prizes in the fields of science (but that's what you meant in advance yourself).
Regarding research abroad - science works this way today and all scientists work in a variety of countries. The point is that their basic preparation at school was good and conditions in the country were friendly enough (relative to the rest of the world) so that they would not run away from here.
However - it is clear that the claim "it used to be good and now it is not" is currently only a theoretical claim that was not tested in the experimental test because the scientists who are "baked" today were not yet supposed to win Nobel prizes.
And yet the theoretical claim has something to rely on according to the experience of other countries and the intellectual desert in the Arab world is a prominent example of the influence of early education.
Michael,
You are of course right, stubbornness alone is not a sufficient condition for winning the Nobel and of course scientific knowledge is required,
But in my opinion, tenacity is one of the most important qualities for winning at least some awards
the Nobel
It is interesting to examine the claim that it used to be good here and now there is no funding for science based on the last win.
By the way, I agree that the state of science in Israel is problematic, but in my opinion part of it is due to a lack
The public's understanding that research is a very competitive field and the state should not pay
A lot of money for pure research people only.
I will return to the subject. The Nobel Prize won by Prof. Shechtman is the result of research he carried out
In the NIST laboratories in the USA, and if I remember correctly, much of Ada Yonat's research was carried out
in Germany and also a large part of the funding came from there. So the claim was once here
Investing in science and now not is partially correct
Michael,
You are of course right, stubbornness alone is not a sufficient condition for winning the Nobel and of course scientific knowledge is required,
But in my opinion, tenacity is one of the most important qualities for winning at least some awards
the Nobel
It is interesting to examine the claim that it used to be good here and now there is no funding for science based on the last win.
By the way, I agree that the state of science in Israel is problematic, but in my opinion part of it is due to a lack
The public's understanding that research is a very competitive field and the state should not pay
A lot of money for pure research people only.
I will return to the subject. The Nobel Prize won by Prof. Shechtman is the result of research he carried out
In the NIST laboratories in the USA, and if I remember correctly, much of Ada Yonat's research was carried out
in Germany and also a large part of the funding came from there. So the claim was once here
Investing in science and now not is partially correct.
sympathetic:
No need to exaggerate.
Even here on the site you will find a lot of people who don't care what they are told.
As you said - maybe this is a typical Israeli trait.
So what differentiates between those who won the Nobel Prize and those who did not?
In my opinion, education has a decisive influence.
Of course, certain character traits are also necessary, but it is not just stubbornness, but one that is based on knowledge and understanding.
Ignoring criticism is generally a bad thing. You need to hear the criticism and check if it really undermines the basis of your conclusions.
Only after you have made sure that the review does not meet your review test should you ignore it.
Rather, the Nobel prizes in chemistry received by Israelis point not to an excellent education system in the past, but to a basic Israeli/Jewish quality. The main quality that earned Prof. Dan Shechtman the Nobel Prize as well as Prof. Ada Yonat is stubbornness, the ability to go against the whole world and ignore it. To Yonat they said "you are delusional, you will not succeed, you will fail" to Shechtman they said "you entertain nonsense". Not as a result of the education they received, these two Israelis won the Nobel Prize, but because of their ability to ignore criticism. The case of Hershko and Chechanover is also a case of this type.
Personal achievements despite the education for mediocrity in the Israeli Education Ministry and not because of it - it is clear that many talented people were lost and the real wealth of their talent was lost!!! Must wake up!!! The brain drain is a disaster.
Israel may be stronger today but it is only thanks to an education system that no longer exists and we will see in 20 years where Israel will be and who will cry over the damages that are being done today!
And who runs to show it off?? Those who do not invest and fight for science in Israel!! Today's success is the result of investment in past years
Look where the "Science" section is located on the popular website YNet, there it is almost at the bottom of the page, and even there it is mixed with some other topics. In my opinion it is simply a shame, what message are they conveying to the readers of the site and especially to the youth regarding the importance of science?
pure shame.
In "Popular Science" there is a rather long article. There is no mention of where this scientist comes from, but there are mentions of a number of scientists all over the world who were the first to take Prof. Shechtman's theory seriously. But their photo of the crystals is a shame that it didn't appear in your article as well.
"Another proof that the State of Israel is a scientific and technological powerhouse"
With Hershko one must link it to winning the Nobel, according to the index of Nobel winners in the universities of the world,
Israel is not a power at all (the Technion is below the Punjab University...)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_by_university_affiliation
Dear Minister of Science,
If Israel is a scientific power, then the Minister of Science will see to it that the government transfers budgets to science:
1) In the education system there is a shortage of science teachers - physics and mathematics teachers. For this reason, teachers who do not have the appropriate training often teach science subjects.
2) Students in the schools are forced to take private lessons in mathematics and physics because the education system does not pay enough attention to the subject of science. Why should students pay for private lessons? And students whose hands do not reach are left behind. The Ministry of Education needs budgets to hire science teachers who will give lessons within the school to struggling students in order to launch Israel into a "scientific power".
3) The academy: preventing the escape of great minds to the USA and Europe. Just today I heard that the government transferred billions to yeshiva and kollels. That's how we will become an ultra-orthodox power and not a scientific power.
4) The promotion of scientific research in colleges.
Maybe winning the tenth Nobel Prize will wake up the government?