Lecture of Nobel Prize Laureate Professor Dan Shechtman

The winner of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for discovering quasicrystals, Professor Dan Shechtman, a distinguished researcher at the Technion–Israel Institute of Technology and a professor at Iowa State University (USA,) will give a lecture titled Quasi-Periodic Materials – a Paradigm Shift in Crystallography, at the SASA Grand Hall, on Wednesday, 17 May, at noon.

Professor Shechtman has developed and studied structural defects and properties of metal alloys and inter-metal compounds using a transmission electron microscope. His research is carried out at the Louis Edelstein Center and at the Wolfson Centre, which is headed by him. Since 2014, he has been at the helm of the International Scientific Council of the National Research Tomsk Polytechnic University (TPU) in Siberia.

While presenting the Nobel Prize, the Nobel Committee at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences pointed out that ‘his discovery was extremely controversial’, although his work ‘in the end forced scientists to reconsider their conception of the very nature of matter.’ Through Shechtman’s discovery, several other groups managed to form similar quasicrystals by 1987, revealing that these materials have low thermal and electrical conductivity, while at the same time, they have high structural stability. Quasicrystals have also been found in nature.

Professor Dan Shechtman’s work has been widely accepted, having won other major prizes in addition to the Nobel Prize.

Two days before the lecture at the SASA Grand Hall is to take place, Professor Dan Shechtman will give a lecture titled Quasicrystals, at the Hall of the University of Novi Sad Rectorate, on Monday, 15 May, at 6 p.m., in the organization of the SASA Branch in Novi Sad.