Israeli among 5 Jewish scientists to win Nobels

[King_David]

October 5, 2011

(JTA) -- An Israeli scientist won the 2011 Nobel Prize for chemistry, and Jewish scientists also took prizes in physics and medicine.

Daniel Shechtman, 70, a distinguished professor at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, was announced as a Nobel winner on Wednesday for his discovery of quasicrystals, mosaics of atoms that form regular patterns that never repeat themselves.

Shechtman, who receives $1.5 million for winning the prize, also is an associate at the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory and a professor at Iowa State University.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said Shechtman's 1982 discovery of quasicrystals changed the way chemists look at solid matter. His discovery had been rejected initially by the scientific community and caused him to be kicked out of his research group.

"I would like to congratulate you, on behalf of the citizens of Israel, for your award, which expresses the intellect of our people," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Shechtman in a congratulatory phone call. "Every Israeli is happy today and every Jew in the world is proud."

Saul Perlmutter, a physicist at the University of California, Berkeley, was among three U.S.-born scientists who won the Nobel Prize in physics announced Tuesday. Perlmutter received the prize for his study of exploding stars that showed that the expansion of the universe is accelerating. He will receive a "coveted" lifetime parking permit on campus in honor of his prize, The Los Angeles Times reported.

Sharing the physics prize with Perlmutter is Adam Riess, also Jewish, an astronomy professor at Johns Hopkins University and Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md. Riess will share half the prize money with his team partner, Brian Schmidt of Australia.


http://www.jta.org/news/article/2011/10/05/3089701/israeli-scientist-wins-nobel-prize-in-chemistry

[King_David]

1. Well Done nt

[JDPriestly]

2. Congratulations to these outstanding scientists!

[LeftishBrit]

3. Congratulations to these great scientists!

[hack89]

4. Scientific excellence is a hallmark of secular societies

if you really want to see the negative impact of religious fundamentalism on a society, look no further than science.

[bemildred]

5. "regular patterns that never repeat themselves"

I would call those "irregular patterns", regular patterns repeat.

But it's a truly cool discovery. Given that we already have amorphous materials, solids, like glass, I would be interested to learn more about the structure of these materials. If I understand it right, one of the uses of this sort of stuff is based on making it's structure more or less "regular" so as to affect the optical properties.