Dan Shechtman is an Israeli chemist, the Philip Tobias Professor of Materials Science at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, an Associate of the US Department of Energy's Ames National Laboratory, and Professor of Materials Science at Iowa State University. On April 8, 1982, while on sabbatical at the U.S. National Bureau of Standards in Washington, D.C., Shechtman discovered the icosahedral phase, which opened the new field of quasiperiodic crystals, also referred to as "quasicrystals." For this discovery, he was awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, making him one of six Israelis who have won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2011, announced October 5, 2011. Dan Shechtman, “for the discovery of quasicrystals”. Dan Shechtman: born 1941, Tel Aviv, British Mandate of Palestine (now Israel). Wiki link Data: the Nobel Foundation (CC0).