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2011 Nobel Laureate Dan Shechtman

Dan Shechtman headshot

In 1982, Dan Shechtman of Iowa State University and the Ames Laboratory discovered a type of crystal so strange, so unusual it upended the scientific world. Shechtman's discovery would cause him to become the 2011 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry.
 
Shechtman tells the story behind his discovery in 1982 of quasicrystals, and how he had to endure ridicule from colleagues who didn’t believe it and how it forced scientists to reconsider the very nature of matter.
 
Shechtman is a professor of materials science and engineering at Iowa State University, a research scientist for the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory, and the Philip Tobias Professor of Materials Science at the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology.

Ben Kieffer is the host of IPR's River to River