Nobel Winner for Quasicrystals to Speak at KTH

Shecthman in October, upon hearing that he had won the 2011 Nobel Prize for Chemistry. Photo: Ariel Schalit/AP

At the KTH Symposium, the director of the U.S. National Science Foundation explains how scientific co-operation with Sweden benefits American research.

Reception and service at central level for international students after arrival at KTH.

For Master's students

For Exchange students

It’s a story of vindication: for years, Israeli researcher Dan Shechtman was ridiculed by his peers for claiming that he had discovered a new form of crystalline structure--one that conventional wisdom held to be impossible. Now he’s in Stockholm to receive the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his ground-breaking work on the structure he named "quasicrystal."

The discovery “fundamentally altered how chemists conceive of solid matter,” the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in announcing the $1.5 million prize, which Professor Shechtman will receive from King Carl XVI Gustav in a tradition-rich ceremony at Stockholm’s Concert Hall on Saturday.

Professor Shechtman’s victory lap to Sweden brings him to KTH on December 9, where he will describe his work in a lecture arranged by friends and colleagues in the university’s School of Materials Science.

“Professor Shechtman showed that he had found a pattern that could not be explained by a traditional periodic lattice, but that could be described by the quasicrystal,” says KTH Professor K. Venkat Rao, one of the organisers of the lecture event. “No one believed him, but now he’s been proven correct. I couldn’t be more excited that my friend is coming here the day before receiving his Nobel.”

Please join us Friday, Dec. 9 at 2:30 pm CET to watch the live stream of this very special lecture.

Kevin Billinghurst

Follow the live stream here!

More on the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry