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Dan Shechtman’s Quasicrystal Discovery in Perspective
Author(s) -
Hargittai Istvan
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
israel journal of chemistry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.908
H-Index - 54
eISSN - 1869-5868
pISSN - 0021-2148
DOI - 10.1002/ijch.201100137
Subject(s) - serendipity , quasicrystal , scientific discovery , curiosity , milestone , chemistry , perspective (graphical) , history of chemistry , nanotechnology , engineering physics , epistemology , history of science , physics , history , crystallography , cognitive science , psychology , philosophy , art , archaeology , materials science , visual arts , social psychology
Dan Shechtman’s discovery of quasicrystals brought about a paradigm change in chemistry, physics, materials science, and other areas of science and engineering. Although superficially it could be looked at as a serendipitous event, Shechtman’s curiosity and drive played equal parts with serendipity in this discovery. Shechtman was a lonely discoverer, again, seemingly detached from the main stream of generalized crystallography for which his contribution was a milestone. Generalized crystallography is the science of structures without restrictions — “structures beyond crystals.”1 The discovery of quasicrystals can be seen as written into the history of ideas that have much extended our views about the tools of our scientific inquiry and the materials we aim at producing and utilizing. This review augments a recent Editorial in the August 2011 issue of Structural Chemistry about the lessons of the quasicrystal discovery2 and a book chapter about Dan Shechtman’s traits as a discoverer and about his road to the discovery.3