Crystallography and the Nobel Prizes: On the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, awarded to Dan Shechtman

Resumen

Crystallography has a considerable presence among Nobel Prize laureates. Indeed, 48 of them have close links to crystallography. The 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Dan Shechtman for his discovery of quasicrystals. In addition to the scientific merit of the work, the Prize is a personal  recognition of Dan Shechtman, whose ideas were initially rejected by the international scientific community. Yet, reason prevailed in the end, supported by arguments that arrived from seemingly unrelated directions, such as the study of Arab building tiles and the mathematical concept of tessellation. Concepts of a more crystallographic nature, such as twinned crystals and modulated and incommensurate crystal structures, also played an important role. Finally, in 1992, the International Union of Crystallography modified the definition of “crystal” to include quasicrystals.

Keywords: crystal structure · electron diffraction · quasicrystals · tessellations