ISU Professor Wins Nobel Prize in Chemistry

An Israeli scientist who began working at in 2004 received the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry on Wednesday, Oct. 5.

Dan Shechtman, 70, received the prize for his 1982 discovery of quasicrystals. It was considered a revolutionary discovery that changed scientists' ideas “about matter and its atomic arrangement,” a news release from the Iowa State News service said.

Shechtman is a materials science and engineering professor at Iowa State and a research scientist for the Ames Laboratory and the Philip Tobias Professor of Materials Science at the Technion at the Israel Institute of Technology. He spends about four months of every year in Iowa and will return in February, according to the release.