FEATURE: Dan Shechtman: “Perseverance Pays”
“My message to young scientist is the following: if you want a wonderful career in science or in other areas, thrive to become an expert. Once you are an expert you can trust yourself, you can trust your results, and then you can stand tall and protect your ideas and your findings," says Dan Shechtman. Image: David Blumenfeld/Nobel Media 2011 When Israeli scientist Dan Shechtman sat at his desk on the morning of April 2, 1982, he would make a discovery that would change the rest of his life and the way we define crystals. Hardly able to believe what he was seeing, the scientist held in his hands results of an electron diffraction he was using at Johns Hopkins University to investigate a quickly solidifying aluminum-magnesium alloy - and it showed him something completely unexpected. Instead of a usual symmetric crystalline arrangement in three-, four- or six-fold axes, the diffraction pattern...