Danny Shechtman – the host of our 4th Symmetry Congress in 1998 and an Honorary Member of our society – was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2011. In the last fifteen years, this is only the fourth case that this prize was given to a single person – following Ahmed H. Zewail (1999), Roger D. Kornberg (2006), Gerhard Ertl (2007) – and not shared by two or three scholars. Danny made a revolutionary contribution to science by discovering the quasicrystals that have 5-fold and other such symmetries that were earlier considered as “forbidden” in crystallography.
See the text of the Presentation Speech by Professor Sven Lidin (10 December 2011):
<http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/2011/presentation-speech.html>
See a Video of the Nobel Prize Award Ceremony (89 minutes):
<http://www.nobelprize.org/mediaplayer/index.php?id=1752>
Danny’s works in our Society’s publications:
Shechtman, D. (1994) Symmetry in periodic and quasi-periodic crystals, Symmetry: Culture and Science, The Quarterly of the International Society for the Interdisciplinary Study of Symmetry, 6, 480 (published for the 3rd Symmetry Congress).
Shechtman, D, Nagy, D. at al., eds. (1998) Order/Disorder, Vols. 1-3, Haifa: Technion, 168 + 167 + 84 pp. (published for the 4th Symmetry Congress).