Author: shlomi ben-oz

Nobel Banquet Speech 2011 – Transcript

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“A new definition of crystal emerged, one that is beautiful and humble and open to further discoveries. A humble scientist is a good scientist.”

Banquet Speech

Dan Shechtman’s speech at the Nobel Banquet, 10 December 2011.
Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Nobel Laureates, fellow scientists, ladies and gentlemen, dear family.
On April 8, 1982, I was alone in the electron microscope room when I discovered the Icosahedral Phase that opened the field of quasi–periodic crystals. However, today I am joined by many hundreds of enthusiastic scientists worldwide. I stand here as the vanguard of the science of quasicrystals, but without these dedicated scientists the field would not be where it is today. This supreme recognition of the science we have unveiled over the last quarter century is celebrated by us all.
In the beginning there were only a handful of gifted colleagues who helped launch the field. First was Ilan Blech, at the time a Technion professor, who proposed the first icosahedral model. He demonstrated, by computer simulation, that the model could produce diffraction patterns that matched those that I had observed in the electron microscope. Together we wrote the first announcement of the discovery. Then John Cahn of the US and Denis Gratias of France coauthored with us the second, modified article that was actually published first. Other key contributions to the field were made by Roger Penrose of the UK who, years earlier, created a nonrepeating aperiodic mosaic with just two rhomboid tiles, and Alan Mackay of the UK who showed that Penrose tiles produce sharp diffraction spots. Dov Levine of Israel and Paul Steinhardt of the US made the connection between my diffraction patterns and Mackay’s work. They published a theoretical paper formulating the fundamentals of quasi-crystals and coined the term. All these pioneers paved the way to the wonderful world of quasi-periodic materials.
I would like to mention two other eminent scientists who are no longer with us, whose commitment to the field was of great importance. These are Luis Michel, a prominent French mathematician, and Kehsin Kuo of China, a leader in electron microscopy, who was trained in Sweden.
We are now approaching the end of 2011, the UNESCO International Year of Chemistry, a worldwide celebration of the field. In a few weeks we will see in the New Year, 2012, the centennial of the von Laue experiment which launched the field of modern crystallography. The following year, 2013, will mark the International Year of Crystallography. The paramount recognition of the discovery of quasi-periodic crystals is, therefore, most timely.
The discovery and the ensuing progress in the field resulted in a paradigm shift in the science of crystallography. A new definition of crystal emerged, one that is beautiful and humble and open to further discoveries. A humble scientist is a good scientist.
Science is the ultimate tool to reveal the laws of nature and the one word written on its banner is TRUTH. The laws of nature are neither good nor bad. It is the way in which we apply them to our world that makes the difference.
It is therefore our duty as scientists to promote education, rational thinking and tolerance. We should also encourage our educated youth to become technological entrepreneurs. Those countries that nurture this knowhow will survive future financial and social crises. Let us advance science to create a better world for all.
———
I would like to thank the scientists who nominated me, the Nobel Committee, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Nobel Foundation for bestowing on me this unparalleled honor.
Thank you.

Nobel Prize Chemistry 2011 Award Ceremony Speech

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Transcript: 


Award Ceremony Speech

Presentation Speech by Professor Sven Lidin, Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences; Member of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, 10 December 2011
Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Ladies and Gentlemen,

For three millennia we have known that five-fold symmetry is incompatible with periodicity, and for almost three centuries we believed that periodicity was a prerequisite for crystallinity. The electron diffraction pattern obtained by Dan Shechtman on April 8, 1982 shows that at least one of these statements is flawed, and it has led to a revision our view of the concepts of symmetry and crystallinity alike. The objects he discovered are aperiodic, ordered structures that allow exotic symmetries and that today are known as quasicrystals. Having the courage to believe in his observations and in himself, Dan Shechtman has changed our view of what order is and has reminded us of the importance of balance between preservation and renewal, even for the most well established paradigms. Science is a theoretical construction on an empirical fundament. Observations make or break theories.

“We are like dwarves on the shoulders of giants, so that we can see more clearly than they, and things at a greater distance, not by the virtue of any sharpness of sight on our part, but because we are carried high and raised up by their great size.” This metaphor, first used by Bernard of Chartres and later by Newton and many others, hails back to antiquity and to the blind giant Orion who carried the servant Cedalion on his shoulders in his quest for the uttermost east where the sun would heal him of his blindness. The myth illustrates the progress of science. Each generation takes knowledge a little further because it builds on the results of its forebears. The image of the amassed knowledge as a blind giant with a seeing dwarf on its shoulders is an idealisation of science at its best: A relationship of mutual trust between the bearer and the borne, between the blind and the seeing. The giant provides established truths. The dwarf strives for new insight. Like every good metaphor this one not only describes the benefits of the arrangement, it also hints at the dangers.
The relation between the dwarf and the giant is fundamentally asymmetric. The dwarf can see, but the giant decides on which road the two shall take. The dilemma of the giant is that he is at the mercy of the dwarf, but he cannot trust him blindly. The paradigms of science are challenged daily on more or less solid grounds and the difficulty is to know when to take these challenges seriously. The dwarf faces the reverse problem. He depends on the giant, and without him he gets nowhere despite the clarity of his vision. In order to make his own choices he is forced down on the ground, to walk alone without the support he enjoyed on the shoulders of the giant. This year’s Chemistry Laureate was forced to do battle with the established truth. The dwarf doesn’t serve the giant by subservience but through independence.
Coming down from the shoulders of the giant is a challenge. Not least because those that remain aloft are tempted to look down at those on the ground. The disbelief that met Dan Shechtman was appropriate and healthy. Questioning should be mutual to promote the growth of knowledge. The ridicule he suffered was, however, deeply unfair. It is far too easy for all of us to remain in our lofty positions, and with lofty disdain regard the fool who claims that we are all wrong. To be that fool on the ground takes great courage, and both he and those that spoke out on his behalf deserve great respect.
Dan Shechtman:Your discovery of quasicrystals has created a new cross-disciplinary branch of science, drawing from, and enriching, chemistry, physics and mathematics. This is in itself of the greatest importance. It has also given us a reminder of how little we really know and perhaps even taught us some humility. That is a truly great achievement.  On behalf of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences I wish to convey our warmest congratulations, and I now ask you to step forward and receive your Prize from the hands of His Majesty the King.

The Nobel Laureate of Former Disgrace

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“Each time I was promoted there were colleagues fighting it…”

Distinguished Prof. Dan Shechtman displays his notebook
at the Nobel Laureate lecture: Dec. 8th, 2011. Previously,
colleagues hurled at him basic textbooks in crystallography
and told him to read them!

Israeli professor Dan Shechtman was vilified for daring to challenge scientific orthodoxy

Read the full story at the Jewish Chronicle
By Nathan Jeffay, December 9, 2011

Shechtman at the Technion in Haifa, where his eureka moment led to a new theory about the way matter is arranged

It could be the closing scene of a feel-good film. But it will happen for real, tomorrow afternoon. Israeli scientist Dan Shechtman, mocked for years for his off-the-wall theory, has not only been proved correct, but he will climb to the podium at Stockholm Concert Hall and receive the Nobel Prize for chemistry. The award is often shared by several people , but he has it all to himself.

During an interview in his Haifa office shortly before travelling to Stockholm, Shechtman recalled the initial reaction to the work that earned the prize. His research-team leader gave him a bit of a talking to. “He came to my office and put a textbook on my desk, smiling sheepishly and telling me that I should read it, as what I was saying was impossible.”

Shechtman, a 70-year-old professor of materials engineering at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, is a modern-day Archimedes. While most Nobel winners receive their prize after painstakingly developing a theory or idea over years, like the ancient scholar who got into the bath and saw the water level rise, Shechtman had a eureka moment.

It was the morning of April 8, 1982 and he was on sabbatical from the Technion at the National Bureau of Standards in Washington DC. He looked through his electron microscope, and found something that defied the laws of science, as they were understood.

Each time I was promoted there were colleagues fighting it

Until then, it was believed that atoms are always arranged in solids in symmetrical patterns, in groups of two, three, four or six. But he was looking at an alloy and found that it contained atoms in groups of 10 around a single point. They made a pattern that did not repeat itself, flying in the face of received wisdom that patterns will always be repeated. These formations became known as “quasicrystals” – and now represent a branch of science studied worldwide.

The Nobel committee said when announcing the award that Shechtman had “forced scientists to reconsider their conception of the very nature of matter”. But to get there was a long and sometimes humiliating battle. The team leader who demanded that he reread the textbook decided that he was bringing “disgrace” to his team and expelled him. Shechtman, who had dreamed of scientific accomplishment ever since his childhood, was not discouraged. “You can say it’s funny or you can say it’s stupid, but I showed everyone who was prepared to listen,” he recalls. “I even sent Chanucah cards with the pattern on them.”

When he returned from Washington in late 1983 he found many colleagues sceptical about his theory, but discovered an ally in the form of Ilan Blech, a professor in the faculty of materials science. This gave him the confidence to write an article on his findings and submit it to the Journal of Applied Physics. It came back with a rejection letter. “The editor didn’t even send it for peer review,” he says sadly. An improved version written with three collaborators, including Blech, was accepted by Physical Review Letters and published in 1984.

“Hell broke loose,” Shechtman recalls. He started receiving letters from scientists across the world saying they had be able to replicate his experiment, but there was also a very strong critical reaction. The International Union of Crystallography and the American Chemical Society led it. In their view, the fact that quasicrystals could only be seen on electron microscopes and not x-ray microscopes undermined the findings, and they believed that he was really looking at two structures of atoms and misreading it as a single one.

Leading the opposition was the only man ever to have won two Nobel Prizes, American chemist Linus Pauling. He reportedly used to say: “There is no such thing as quasicrystals, only quasi-scientists.” Even in Shechtman’s own department at the Technion, “there were professors fighting against my promotion and each time I was promoted there was opposition,” he says.

It was not until 1987 that his findings started to become mainstream. Two groups of scientists managed to identify quasicrystals on an x-ray microscope. He recalls going to the International Union of Crystallography after this breakthrough. “They said: ‘Danny, now you’re talking’ and they accepted it.” When Pauling died in 1994, the opposition evaporated completely.

When the call came from the Nobel committee in October, he was told to keep the news a secret for half an hour, when it would be announced. “I sat at my desk for 20 minutes just looking around and thinking: ‘What does it mean?'” He was calm. “If you measured my heart rate now it is 60; I don’t know if at that moment it got as high as 61.” After 20 minutes he called his wife Zipora, a professor at Haifa University, “because she is always mad that I don’t tell her about prizes”.

He was, he says, completely unprepared for the euphoria at the Technion and his celebrity across Israel which followed. The pattern he discovered is the ultimate fashion statement at the Technion, where staff members wear ties decorated with it. Shechtman shows off a kippah with the pattern that a student crocheted for him to wear when addressing Jewish groups.

Asked what is the practical significance of his discovery, Shechtman gives a wry smile and says “very little”. Quasi-crystals have been used to make strong materials for razors and non-stick pans, but for Shechtman the important thing is the correction of an erroneous assumption about the world. In his opinion, “a humble scientist is a good scientist”, and by forcing a rethink on the basics, he believes he has made the scientific community more humble.

“The new definition of a crystal is a wonderful one, because it is humble,” he says. “It doesn’t say: ‘A crystal is…’ It says: ‘By a crystal we mean…'”

Shechtman’s personality fits his talk of humility. There is no ceremony – no waiting rooms or secretaries – when visiting his office. His hobbies confirm the impression that he is a patient man – he likes sailing and jewellery-making. He believes that there is a message for everybody in his prize. “If you find something, concentrate on it and try to see if it is real; listen to other people but if they aren’t interested, don’t take their words as fact. Continue to push your belief.”

The Quasicrystal Caucus

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“The mostimportantthing about thequasicrystals istheir meaningfor fundamentalscience. They haverewritten thefirst chapter inthe textbooks ofordered matter.”

Prof. Sven Lidin, Professor of InorganicChemistry, Lund University. Member of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry

File:Penrose tiling.gif
In the mid-1970s, mathematician Prof. Roger Penrose, of Oxford University, created an aperiodic mosaic, with a pattern that never repeats itself, with just two different rhomboid tiles
(a fat rhombus and a thin rhombus).
The page in Dan Shechtman’s lab logbook recording his April 8th, 1982, discovery.
Meeting at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in 1985 just months after shaking the foundations of materials science with publication of his discovery of quasicrystals, Dan Shechtman, winner of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, discusses the material’s surprising atomic structure with collaborators. From left to right are Shechtman; Frank Biancaniello, NIST; Denis Gratias, National Science Research Center, France; John Cahn, NIST; Leonid Bendersky, Johns Hopkins University (now at NIST); and Robert Schaefer, NIST.



200 years and nobody noticed?


How could quasicrystalshave evaded the communityof crystallographers for solong? In addition to the vitalinput of his collaborators,says Shechtman, thediscovery required severalcritical components. First,it was necessary to makeesoteric, rather than useful,rapidly cooled alloys.Then a researcher wouldhave to study them witha transmission electronmicroscope, performnumerous detailed analyses,and finally face a fortress ofresistance to changing therules of understanding thematerial world.

A quasiperiodic crystal is a structure that is ordered but not periodic. In quasicrystals, the symmetry is broken: there are regular patterns in the structure but the structure never repeats itself. A shifted copy will never match exactly.

Back in the ’80s when the new class of matter was accepted only by a few, it was dubbed
“Shechtmanite,” after the man who led the field through conception and infancy. The name “Shechtmanite” carried the risk of humiliation if the material turned out to be “twinning” (the intergrowth of two separate crystals on a shared lattice), as claimed by Shechtman’s opponents.
Quasicrystal structure can be understood through the mathematical theory of tiling.
Initially, however, Shechtman’s discovery was viewed with skepticism. “The scandal of
polywater was still in the air, and I feared for my scientific and academic career,” says Shechtman.
(l-r) John Werner Cahn, Dan Shechtman, Ilan Blech and Denis Gratias together on the
occasion of an international congress on quasicrystals in France, 1995.
© CNRS Photothèque – Pierre Grumberg
Shechtman returned to Technion, where Dr. Ilan Blech was the only colleague who not only believed in him but who agreed to cooperate with him. Blech was able to decipher Shechtman’s experimental findings and offered an explanation, known as the Icosahedral Glass Model.

Together, the researchers wrote an article that contained the model and the experimental results, and submitted it to the Journal of AppliedPhysics in the summer of 1984. The paper was rejected, resubmitted to the journal Metallurgical Transactions, and was published in 1985.
In November 1984, Physical ReviewLetters published Shechtman’s discovery in a scientific paper coauthored with three other scientists: Ilan Blech (Israel), Denis Gratias (France) and John Cahn (USA). Wider acclaim followed, mainly from physicists and mathematicians and later from crystallographers.

Pioneering contributors to the field of quasicrystals are Prof. Dov Levine of the Technion Faculty of Physics and Prof. Paul Steinhardt of Princeton University. They made the
connection between a theoretical tenfold symmetry model proposed by Prof. Alan Mackay and Shechtman’s diffraction pattern, and developed the mathematical model for the structure of non-periodic icosahedral phases found in metallic alloys. Steinhardt and Levine published an article in 1984 where they described quasicrystals and their aperiodic mosaics. 
Quasicrystals first got their name in this article!

Dov Levine (left) with Paul Steinhardt (right) 
at the Technion Faculty of Physics in 2006.
In August 1986, David R. Nelson wrote in Scientific American, “Shechtmanite quasicrystals are no mere curiosity. The study of quasicrystals has tied together two existing branches of theory: the theory of metallic glasses and the mathematical theory of aperiodic tilings. In doing so it has brought new and powerful tools to bear on the study of metallic alloys. Questions about long- and short-range icosahedral order should occupy solid-state physicists and materials scientists for some time to come.”

Today, over 40 scientific books have been dedicated to quasiperiodic crystals, and the International Union of Crystallography has changed its basic definition of a crystal, reducing it to the ability to produce a clear-cut diffraction pattern and acknowledging that crystallographic order can be either periodic or aperiodic.



The Great Leviathan… Engineering Israel’s Energy Hope

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Natural Gas and Energy Engineering:
Technion Leads the WayFrom: Technion Focus.


By: Prof. Shlomo Maital

“If Moses had turned right instead of left when he led his people out of the Sinai Desert,” goes an old joke, “the Jews would have had the oil and the Arabs would have ended up with the oranges.” We can’t tell that joke any more. Two major gas fields have been discovered offshore, in the Mediterranean, named Tamar and Leviathan. The latter is said to be the biggest gas find in the world in a decade.

Leviathan means “whale” in Hebrew and indeed is a whale of a find – new estimates show Leviathan has some 16 trillion cubic feet of gas, worth (at current European market prices, one cent per cubic foot) over $160 b. The Tamar gas field has an estimated eight trillion cubic feet of gas; it is located 90 km (54 miles) offshore, three miles deep, and its gas will reach Haifa in 2013. Leviathan is 130 km (78 miles) offshore. Many experts believe that in addition to the gas, there is also offshore oil.

The question now fiercely debated, is, what should Israel do with this new, incredible windfall? Liquify it and export it? Use it for gas-based industries, like petrochemicals? But first, a more pressing dilemma exists. Where will Israel find the hundreds of petroleum and natural gas engineers needed to bring the gas to shore safely and efficiently, and then process it optimally? This is a huge, enormously difficult and extremely costly challenge. Perhaps because Moses made that wrong turn, Israeli universities do not teach petroleum engineering.

That is, until now.

At the initiative of Technion President Prof. Peretz Lavie and Senior Executive Vice President Prof. Paul Feigin, Technion has moved with alacrity to launch a Master of Engineering program in Energy Engineering, with specialization in natural gas and petroleum engineering. The program is open for enrolment and formal studies will begin on December 28, 2011. For 18 months, some 25 engineers will study drilling engineering; production, transportation and storage engineering; or reservoir management, at their choice. Haifa University is an active collaborator through its Department of Marine Geosciences.

As Feigin notes, “the efficient, safe and environmentally responsible exploitation of [Israel’s] natural gas reserves is the major engineering challenge facing the State of Israel in the coming decades. The Technion, as it has done throughout its history, is taking the lead in providing the education and developing the know-how in order to meet this challenge.”

The director of the new program is Prof. Yair Ein-Eli of the Faculty of Materials Engineering. I asked him where the graduates of the program will be employed. He told me they would work for exploration companies (there may be vast additional reservoirs of oil and gas yet undiscovered), drilling groups, consulting companies, entities that process, transport and distribute the gas, and of course, for governmental ministries (Infrastructure, Finance, and Industry).

Finding top experts suitable to teach in this program was not easy. Technion found them at Technion itself, and at Haifa University, as well as at America’s University of Houston and Colorado School of Mines, and Norwegian Technological University. Both the U.S. and Norway have vast experience in exploiting oil and gas reserves.

Technion has a long history of anticipating Israel’s needs for engineering skills and with vision, supplying them. In November 1950, Prof. Sydney Goldstein, then head of the Aeronautical Research Council of Great Britain, arrived in Haifa to become dean of Technion’s fledgling Aeronautical Engineering Faculty. For a nation with barely a million people, and per capita GDP of $1,500, some thought this Faculty was folly. But 38 years later, on September 19, 1988, Israel became the eighth country in the world to launch a satellite. The effort was led by Technion-trained aeronautical engineers and students. Today space is a potential growth industry for Israel.

Technion petroleum and gas engineers will bring home the gas. Technion chemical engineers will show Israel how to best exploit this resource. And Technion graduates in management will lead the businesses that do so.

We owe Moses an apology for that tired joke. He knew precisely where he was going after all. In the end, we got the oranges – and the gas and oil as well.

Prof. Emeritus Shlomo Maital is a senior research fellow at Samuel Neaman Institute for National Policy Research, Technion. This article is based in part on Maital’s Marketplace column, Jerusalem Report, May 9, 2011.
© 2011 Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Division of Publ

Google Search for Innovation. Result: Israel.

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Google to set up startup incubator in IsraelSearch engine giant to endorse 20 initiatives at a time by providing office space and information, Internet, consultation, financial and legal services

Blogged from Ynet.
Assaf Gilad, Calcalist
Published:11.14.11, 07:47 / Israel Business

Google is falling in line with other global companies and plans to establish a startup incubator for Israeli startup companies, scheduled to become operational next August.

Google will rent an entire floor at the Electra office tower in the heart of Tel Aviv. The initiative is scheduled to begin operating at the same time Google Israel headquarters and its R&D center move into the Electra tower as well.

The incubator will endorse 20 startups at a time which will rotate every few months. Google stresses that the technological incubator will be separate from the R&D center and operate as a community in its own right.

Google Israel will not invest in the companies in return for stock but it will assist them to procure loans and find guarantors.

Furthermore, Google will provide the startups with the utilities and infrastructure for their operations: Office space, meeting rooms, internet access, information services, tools and consultation from Google professionals, guidance from external bodies and experts as well as ancillary services such as legal, marketing and financial consultation.

The project will be headed by Amir Shavit, who is the company’s liaison with its developers in Israel, and Eyal Miller, head of business development at Google Israel.

According to head of R&D at Google Israel, Professor Yossi Matias, the incubator will welcome startups from various fields with an emphasis on open technologies, including from sectors which usually are not represented in Israel’s technology industry.

Google will establish a team that will work in cooperation with universities and colleges and most probably choose companies that can develop complementary products for Google’s products.

Recently a number of global companies have been establishing incubator-like initiatives, among them Red Hat, which announced last week it would launch a program to assist Israeli startup companies.

Other recently established initiatives include Genesis Fund’s Junction and Gil Ben Artzy’s UpWest Labs.

Microsoft also announced that it would establish together with the Technion an academic research center for the development of technological commerce technologies.

Israel’s Neuroscientists pool strengths for Alzheimers treatment

Posted on by shlomi ben-oz
Avraham Pharmaceuticals raises $3mAvraham Pharmaceuticals has begun a Phase II clinical trials of its treatment, which combines existing drugs from Teva and Novartis.

Blogged from Globes.

13 November 11 18:47, Gali Weinreb.

Avraham Pharmaceuticals Ltd., which is developing a treatment for Alzheimer’s disease, has raised $3 million. Eli Hurvitz’s Pontifax Fund, Clal Biotechnology Industries Ltd. (TASE: CBI), Yissum Technology Transfer Company of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and the Technion Research and Development Foundation have participated in the financing round. Prof. Marta Weinstock-Rosin of Hebrew University, the inventor of Exelon, made by Novartis AG (NYSE:NVS; LSE: NOV; SWX: NOVZ), also participated in the round.
Avraham Pharmaceuticals announced that it has begun Phase II clinical trials of its treatment, which is a new molecule in which components from two existing drugs are combined: Teva’s Azilect used to treat Parkinson’s disease, and Novartis’s Exelon used to treat Alzheimer’s disease.
The drug was developed by Teva for over ten years, but then returned to Yissum and the Technion because of patent considerations and the project was taking such a long time. Since then, the company has been re-established, has raised $9 million, and a few changes in the patent were made making it valid for a longer period of time. Teva has proven in clinical trials that the drug is safe and that it affects the body as expected, ie. causes a rise or fall in the level of chemicals associated with Alzheimer’s in the blood. The drug has not, however, reached the trial stage in which its benefit to real patients has been examined. Avraham Pharmaceuticals now has the responsibility to prove this.
In addition to its experiments concerning Alzheimer’s disease, Avraham Pharmaceuticals will soon begin clinical trials of a drug that treats mild cognitive impairment, which is thought to precede Alzheimer’s disease.
Yissum Technology has announced that its 30% stake in Avraham Pharmaceuticals (after the latest investment) will be transferred to a new holding company that it founded in the biotech field.
Sources inform “Globes” that besides Avraham Pharmaceuticals, the holding company will include six other companies that are currently conducting clinical trials: Tiltan Pharma, VCD, Autocas Bio, Lipicure, Algen Biopharmaceuticals and Novotyr Therapeutics. The holding company is called Integra and it is currently in the midst of a private financing round. Integra will be managed by Dr. Noa Shelach, a former Weizmann Institute Yeda manager, and CBI-Weizmann Institute Campus Bio project manager.

Published by Globes [online], Israel business news – www.globes-online.com – on November 13, 2011
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2011

QuasiCrystals, Shechtmanite… Future Applications.

Posted on by shlomi ben-oz


Surface CoatingsAn important area of application is the use of quasicrystals as materials for surface coatings, which benefit from the hardness of quasicrystals. The most prominent example is the use of quasicrystalline coatings in frying pans – an application famous in the quasicrystal community as it has served as a key example. Recently, quasicrystal-coated frying pans appeared on the market, and are sold by the French company Sitram under the trademark Cybernox.

Due to their particular physical and chemical properties, quasicrystalline coatings are suited for this kind of application. They are also rather cheap which makes them even more interesting for industrial applications.

Alloys Containing Quasicrystalline Nanoparticles

A different way to circumvent the brittleness of quasicrystalline bulk material while preserving some of its useful properties is the use of an Al-based alloy reinforced by precipitation of icosahedral particles in the nanometer range. Such materials, which are now commercially available in Japan, are of great technological interest as they can be strong but much lighter than other materials with comparable physical properties.

Examples of existing applications include razor blades and surgeon’s instruments, though this may have been more by chance than being an intentional application of quasicrystals. Experts predict that a similar use could soon find its way to the aviation industry.

Hydrogen Storage

A third, and maybe more speculative, application concerns the use of quasicrystals as a reversible storage medium for hydrogen. The most promising quasicrystal materials for hydrogen storage are Zr-based quasicrystals. For such systems, storage capabilities of almost two hydrogen atoms per metal atom have been reported, comparable to the storage capability of the Ti-Fe hybrides which have already been applied in non-polluting internal combustion engines. Further investigation are being carried out to reach the stage of industrial applicability.

See also: Quasicrystals and the Speed of Light.

Prof. Dan Shechtman Discusses Quasicrystal Applications 
(Oct. 2011)
“There is always something new in quasicrystals. There are so many people working on it around the world, so every month there are new developments. If you use a material for an application, then you need a special property that will be better than other materials—otherwise, why use this material? Quasi-periodic materials have certain properties which are unique, such as electrical properties, optical properties, hardness and nonstick properties. The direction of light through this material is different. Electrically, they behave in a very peculiar way depending on temperature. Some of these properties have been put to use.
The first application was nonstick coating on frying pans and cooking utensils. If you cook on quasicrystals, your omelet will not stick to it, like Teflon. But unlike Teflon, if you use a knife in the [quasicrystal] skillet, you will ruin the knife. When you have Teflon and you use a knife, you ruin the Teflon. Ruined Teflon is not healthy. I have a frying pan which is plasma-coated with quasicrystals and it works fine. It was made by a French company, Sitram. They closed the production line because they had a few problems in the reaction of the coating with salt. If people cook with a lot of salt it will etch the quasicrystalline coating. People didn’t like it, so they did not continue.
Sandvik, a company in Sweden, produces a precipitation-hardened stainless steel that has interesting properties. The steel is strengthened by small quasicrystalline particles and it does not corrode. It is an extremely strong steel. It is used for anything that touches the skin, for instance, razor blades or surgery tools. When a material deforms in such a way that it will not spring back, in most cases, the deformation is due to a process called dislocation glide. There are defects in the material that cause dislocations. If they are free to move, then it is easy to bend the material. But if something stops them, then it is more difficult and the material is harder and stronger. These little quasicrystalline particles impede the motion of dislocation in the material.
Because some of these materials have a low coefficient of friction, and they have nonstick properties and are also hard, imagine what would happen if you produce quasicrystalline powder in tiny little balls by rapid solidification process, a gas-atomizing process, then you can embed the fine powders in plastic. Because these particles are strong and can withstand friction and wear, you can make gears from this plastic and the gears will not erode because of these embedded particles. It’s like a protection from erosion. This can serve in ventilators and fans that have plastic gears. Also, the heat conductivity of some of these quasicrystals is very poor. It’s almost an insulator. So you can coat with it and it will insulate against heat transfer.
This is an important discovery, because it’s the first one found in nature, but there are no practical applications. There are many, many metals, but if you think that all the metals can be used for something useful, think again. Look at construction materials. We have steel, which is based on iron, we have aluminum alloys, magnesium alloys, titanium-based alloys, nickel-based alloys, copper alloys, and that’s about all, if I haven’t forgotten any. What do all the other metals do? What are the applications of ytterbium? What are the applications of all the other metals? So to have an application for a material is not trivial.”

The Technion Nobel Tradition

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The Technion Nobel Laureates

Nobel Laureate Albert Einstein used to play violin in a string quartet with historic Technion architect and faculty member Prof. Alexander Baerwald. In the recession after WW1, dreams of making the Technion a functioning reality were slim, and Einstein was invited to come visit the waiting buildings designed by his friend and to advise on the dream of opening a technical institute in Haifa. On that day, the Nobel Laureate and his wife planted two trees to mark the occasion. On his return to Berlin, Einstein would open and chair the world’s first Technion society – the initiation of an apparatus that would generate a century of progress, teaching and expansion as the decade by decade, the Technion could anticpate and meet the needs of a fledgling nation.
On the 100th anniversary of the Technion’s first cornerstone, Technion’s Prof. Dan Shechtman was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. He is today Technion’s third Nobel Laureate, joining Prof. Avraham Hershko and Aaron Ciechanover. All three of them follow the spirit of scientific integrity and excellence in pure research displayed by founding father Albert Einstein, to whom the Technion owes so much. Scroll down to absorb a little of the Technion’s Nobel legacy.


LOKEY PARK ~ TECHNION GARDEN OF NOBEL LAUREATES

 

 

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Lokey Park – a garden of trees planted by
global Nobel Laureates at Technion City.

Technion 2011 Nobel Laureate Danny Shectman will be joining a list of Nobel Laureates who planted trees to celebrate their visit to Technion. The tradition was begun by Prof. Albert Einstein – Chairman of the first Technion Society, who planted two palm trees in 1923 in front of the Technion’s majestic first building in Hadar, Haifa.
1921: Albert Einstein initiates the Technion Nobel tradition.

Nobel Laureate Trees planted at Lokey Park and on Technion soil.

  • Prof. Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, UK; Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, 2009
  • Professor Ada Yonath, Israel; Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, 2009
  • Professor Linda B. Buck, USA; Nobel Laureate in Physiology/Medicine 2004
  • Prof. Avram Hershko, Israel; Nobel Laureate in Chemistry 2004
  • Prof. Aaron Ciechanover, Israel; Nobel Laureate in Chemistry 2004
  • Prof. Tim Hunt. U.K; Nobel Laureate in Medicine, 2001
  • Prof. Kurt Wüthrich, Switzerland; Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, 2002
  • Prof. Günter Blobel, USA; Nobel Laureate in Medicine, 1999
  • Prof. Ferid Murad, USA; Nobel Laureate in Medicine, 1998
  • Prof. Jean-Marie Lehn, France; Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, 1987
  • Prof. David Gross, USA; Nobel Laureate in Physics, 2004
  • Prof. Elie Wiesel, USA; Nobel Laureate in Peace, 1986
  • Rita Levi-Montalcini, Italy; Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 1986
  • Albert Einstein, Germany/USA at old site; Nobel Prize in Physics, 1923


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Technion’s Nobel Laureates in Chemistry – Collect the stamp, and watch this space for a New Nobel Edition!


ISRAEL POST – INTERNATIONAL YEAR OF CHEMISTRY 2011

 

Technion Prof. Ehud Keinan, President of the Israel Chemical Society, had the vision to celebrate the international year of chemistry in a manner suited to the world-class position of Israel’s three Nobel Laureates in science. With determination and application, he engineered the release of official stamps celebrating the Year of Chemistry, and Israel’s Nobel Laureates.
Ubiquitin
Why our proteins must die so that we may live
Proteins are the machines that drive our bodies. They are responsible for all our activities, from the beating of our hearts, to walking, seeing, hearing, digestion, respiration and even the secretion of waste materials. Unlike useful items that surround us, like furniture and clothing, our bodies’ proteins are dynamic. They are constantly being destroyed and rebuilt, again and again. Our bodies destroy on a daily basis up to 10% of our proteins and generate new ones instead. This phenomenon raises interesting questions: why does this process occur at all, and how does it occur? Which diseases would happen if this mechanism was to fail? How can we cure such diseases? As part of the body’s quality control mechanism, proteins are destroyed after fulfilling their specific function in case they have been damaged by heat, by pollutants, by genetic mutation, or simply because they are no longer needed. Professors Aaron Ciechanover and Avram Hershko of the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, and Irwin Rose of the University of California, Irvine, USA, were jointly awarded the 2004 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for discovering the mechanism that removes damaged or unnecessary proteins. These proteins are labeled for destruction by another small protein called ubiquitin, whose general structure is shown on the stamp. The structure was adopted from W. J. Cook and his coworkers, the Journal of Molecular Biology, 1987. Once tagged by this “kiss of death” the labeled proteins are removed by a biological shredding machine called the proteasome, while sparing healthy, untagged proteins. Aberrations in this protein destruction process may result in numerous sicknesses, including certain types of cancers and brain diseases. Many pharmaceutical companies are working to develop drugs to combat such diseases. One such drug to treat multiple myeloma, which is a form of blood cancer, is already used clinically.


Ehud Keinan
Professor of Chemistry
Technion – Israel Institute of Technology,
President of the Israel Chemical Society,
Editor in Chief, Israel Journal of Chemistry,
Chairman of the Chemistry Committee,
Ministry of Education
 
Dr. Joerg Harms of the University of Hamburg is
acknowledged for the ribosome graphics.
Technical Details:
Issue: January 2011
Design: Haimi Kivkovitch
Stamp Size: 30 mm x 40 mm
Plate nos: 823 (two phosphor bars)
824 (two phosphor bars)
Sheet of 15 stamps, Tabs: 5
Printers: Joh. Enschede, The Netherlands
Method of printing: Offset
 

Who is Dan Shechtman?

Posted on by shlomi ben-oz


“His discovery was extremely controversial. In the course of defending his findings, he was asked to leave his research group… However, his battle eventually forced scientists to reconsider their conception of the very nature of matter… Scientists are currently experimenting with using quasicrystals in different products such as frying pans and diesel engines.”

The Nobel Committee at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

Dan Shectman in 1983, shortly after his discovery
Dan Shechtman in 2010…
still unravelling the implications.


“This is the Israeli spirit. Sometimes this leads to chaos; but free thinking encourages successful scientists. We are living here in a free society… many of us do not follow the rules, and this is part of the national character of a free-thinking people.”


In 1906, 105 years ago, Dan Shechtman’s grandparents came from Russia to Israel . His grandfather, he recalls, was one of the leaders of the Labor Movement. He set up a printing house. “It was the time of the 2ndAliyah,” Shechtman told international press in Jerusalem this week, “Ninety percent subsequently left but the ten percent who stayed made Israel into the great country it is.”

Dan Shechtman was born in Tel Aviv on January 24, 1941. “I went to a youth movement – HaShomer Hatzair. In 1959, I started my military service – it was 2.5 years then. During which, I met my future wife. Then I went to Technion to study engineering. It was the dream of my life. I thought it was the best thing a man could be. I read a book in my youth by Jules Verne, The Mysterious Island. There was a character, Cyrus Smith, who could do everything. He was an engineer, and I wanted to be like him.  

Shechtman received his BSc, MSc, and PhD from Technion in 1966, 1968, and 1972, respectively. He joined the Technion Faculty of Materials Engineering in 1975, and was made Distinguished Professor in 1998. He holds the Philip Tobias Chair in Material Sciences, and heads the Louis Edelstein Centre for Quasicrystals.  “In 1975, I was offered a position at Technion. I was made a Distinguished Professor – there are some 7 and 3 of us are Nobel laureates.”

Dan Shechtman discovered the Icosahedral Phase in 1982. It is the first structure in the field of quasi-periodic crystals, and was discovered in aluminum transition metal alloys.



He instigated the course Technological Entrepreneurship in 1986, referring to it as “my baby,” and has overseen it annually ever since.  The course is offered in the winter semester each year and comprises 14 guest lectures, some of which are inspirational talks delivered by successful Israeli entrepreneurs. Shechtman is invited to lecture worldwide about the Technological Entrepreneurship course, arousing much interest. He considers himself a missionary, “I coordinate the course with pleasure. I do it for Israel.”


“This is the Israeli spirit. Sometimes this leads to chaos; but free thinking encourages successful scientists. We are living here in a free society… many of us do not follow the rules, and this is part of the national character of a free-thinking people.”


Between 2001 and 2004, Shechtman served as chairperson of the sciences division, Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities. Now as a member, he continues to oversee the translation of the Nobel Prize scientific posters into Hebrew, and their annual distributes to schools throughout the country.



Shechtman has been voted as an outstanding lecturer by his students at the Technion for ten years consecutively. He is married and lives in Haifa. He has four children and nine grandchildren.

Shechtman with his family after the spontaneous press meeting at Technion (Oct. 5th, 2011).


The Path to the Nobel Prize: Shechtman Timeline.

Posted on by shlomi ben-oz
Meeting at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in 1985 just months after shaking the foundations of materials science with publication of his discovery of quasicrystals, Daniel Shechtman, winner of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, discusses the material’s surprising atomic structure with collaborators. From left to right are Shechtman; Frank Biancaniello, NIST; Denis Gratias, National Science Research Center, France; John Cahn, NIST; Leonid Bendersky, Johns Hopkins University (now at NIST); and Robert Schaefer, NIST.
Seeing is believing, or not?
Technion President Prof. Peretz Lavie with Prof. Dan Shechtman at the
Nobel Prize press conference (October 5th, 2011)


Milestones on the Path to the Nobel Prize

1912
1st Cornerstone of the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology is laid.
1941
Shechtman is born.

1966
Shechtman receives his Bsc from Technion.
1968

Shechtman receives his Msc from Technion.


1972

Shechtman receives his Phd from Technion.


1982

Dan Shechtman discovers Shechtmanite (quasicrystals), observing the icosahedral phase in rapidly solidified aluminum transition metal alloys

1982-84
Shechtman ridiculed, and his paper rejected for publication.
1984
Shechtman’s discovery appears in Physical Review Letters.
1984-1987
Support follows from physicists and mathematicians. Chemist Linus Pauling continues until his death in 1994 to deny Shechtman’s discovery.
1987
Findings presented at Australian crystallography conference and Shechtman finally begins to gain recognition

1988

The International Award for New Materials of the American Physical Society
1990
Rothschild Prize in Engineering
1991
International Union of Crystallography amends its definition of crystals
1993
Weizmann Science Award  
1996
Elected member of the Israel Academy of Sciences
1997
Elected Honorary Member of Materials Research Society of India (MRSI)
1998
Israel Prize in Physics; Honorary Member of ISIS-Symmetry (International Society for Interdisciplinary Sciences); Honorary Member of the Israel Society for Microscopy
1999
Wolf Prize in Physics, “for the experimental discovery of quasicrystals which inspired the exploration of a new fundamental state of matter”; Honorary Member of the Israel Crystallographic Association  
2000
Gregori Aminoff Prize of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences; Member of the American National Academy of Engineering; Honorary Member of the French Physical Society
2002
EMET Prize for Science, Art and Culture, “for his pioneering contribution to the discovery of quasicrystals which revolutionized the understanding of solid state science”
2004
Member of the European Academy of Sciences
2006
Honorary Member of the Japan Institute of Metals “in recognition of his outstanding contributions in the field of metallurgy and materials science”
2007
International Symposium: Quasicrystals – The Silver Jubilee, Tel Aviv
2008 
European Materials Research Society 25th Anniversary Award
2011
Symposium to Honor Distinguished Prof. Dan Shechtman on his 70th Birthday, Technion.
2011
Nobel Prize in Chemistry