http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/10/05/MNI61LDR0D.DTL

When Israeli scientist Dan Shechtman said he stumbled upon a new
crystalline chemical structure that seemed to violate the laws of
nature, colleagues mocked him, insulted him and exiled him from his
research group.

After years in the scientific wilderness, though, he was proved right.
And Wednesday, he received the ultimate vindication: the Nobel Prize
in chemistry.

The lesson?

"A good scientist is a humble and listening scientist and not one that
is sure 100 percent in what he read in the textbooks," Shechtman said.

The shy, 70-year-old Shechtman said he never doubted his findings and
considered himself merely the latest in a long line of scientists who
advanced their fields by challenging the conventional wisdom and were
shunned by the establishment because of it.

In 1982, Shechtman discovered what are now called "quasicrystals" -
atoms arranged in patterns that seemed forbidden by nature.

"I was thrown out of my research group. They said I brought shame on
them with what I was saying," he recalled. "I never took it
personally. I knew I was right and they were wrong."

The discovery "fundamentally altered how chemists conceive of solid
matter," the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in awarding the
$1.5 million prize.

Since his discovery, quasicrystals have been produced in laboratories,
and a Swedish company found them in one of the most durable kinds of
steel, which is now used in products such as razor blades and thin
needles made specifically for eye surgery, the academy said.
Quasicrystals are also being studied for use in new materials that
convert heat to electricity.

Shechtman is a professor at the Technion-Israel Institute of
Technology in Haifa, Israel. He is the 10th Israeli Nobel winner, a
great source of pride in a nation of just 7.8 million people.
Shechtman fielded congratulatory calls from Israeli President Shimon
Peres, who shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994, and Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu.

Shechtman, who also teaches at Iowa State University in Ames, said he
never wavered even in the face of stiff criticism from double Nobel
winner Linus Pauling, who never accepted Shechtman's findings.

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