Quasi-Periodic Crystals—The Long Road from Discovery to Acceptance

• Main Author: Daniel Schechtman
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Rambam Health Care Campus 2013-01-01
• Series: Rambam Maimonides Medical Journal
• Subjects: Quasi-periodic crystals; crystallography; periodicity; paradigm shift
• Online Access: http://rmmj.org.il/Pages/ArticleHTM.aspx?manuId=241

[Extract] Three surprising discoveries on the nature of matter and its properties were published in the mid-1980s. All these discoveries led to Nobel prizes. The first discovery was in 1985, when fullerenes were discovered by Robert F. Curl Jr, Sir Harold W. Kroto, and Richard E. Smalley. Fullerenes, also known as buckyballs, are spherical molecules composed of carbon atoms. The discovery of fullerenes launched the field of nano-materials, one of the fastest-growing fields in chemistry today. In 1996, 11 years after the publication of the discovery, the three researchers were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry. No controversy surrounded this discovery. In 1986, two IBM researchers, Karl Müller and Johannes Bednorz, discovered high-temperature superconductive materials. Although superconductivity was first discovered in 1911, nobody expected to see this phenomenon at the relatively high temperatures of liquid nitrogen. In 1987, one year after publishing their discovery, the two researchers were awarded the Nobel Prize in physics. Again, no controversy surrounded this discovery, and, as the short period of time between the discovery and awarding of the prize shows, the discovery was enthusiastically embraced by the scientific community. Publication of the third discovery pre-dates the publication of the other two discoveries. I published the discovery of quasi-periodic crystals in 1984 and was awarded a Nobel Prize in 2011, 27 years after the discovery. Unlike the previous two discoveries, this discovery was met with fierce opposition and a substantial amount of controversy. What was so controversial about this discovery that it raised the antagonism of so many people in the scientific community? Why would Linus Pauling, a twice-awarded Nobel Laureate and one of the greatest chemists of the twentieth century, state: “There is no such thing as quasi-crystals, only quasi-scientists”? In order to answer these questions, I must first give a short introduction to crystallography. For that purpose, I will define three basic terms in crystallography: order, periodicity, and rotational symmetry.