Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2011 for the discovery of a crystal with pentagonal rotational symmetry – a phenomenon that had been considered impossible for about seventy years. Huge excitement! Research Professor Dan Shechtman from the Faculty of Materials Engineering at the Technion won the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of quasi-periodic crystals in 1982. In 1982 Prof. Shechtman was on sabbatical at the US National Bureau of Standards laboratories in Maryland. In one of his observations in the penetrating electron microscope, he saw electron diffraction that indicated that the crystal under examination was a crystal with rotational symmetry of five – a symmetry that was considered impossible in periodic crystals. For two years, most scientists rejected the observation and belittled the research conducted by Shechtman. Only in 1984, after persisting and repeating experiments that would prove the observation, he received the recognition he deserved. Today it is known that hundreds of materials maintain the structure discovered by Professor Shechtman, and every year several national and international conferences are held on the subject. Dan Shechtman (born January 24, 1941) is a research professor in the Faculty of Materials Science and Engineering at the Technion, an Israeli engineer and researcher of the structure of matter, who discovered and led to the definition of a new crystal structure of quasi-periodic crystals. For this discovery, he was awarded the Israel Prize for Physics in 1998 and the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2011. Shechtman was born in Tel Aviv and grew up in Ramat Gan and Petach Tikva, the son of Itzhak and Netanya Shechtman. His grandfather (his mother’s father) Ze’ev Ashur was part of the Second Aliyah and one of the first members of Poale Zion. He was a member of the Hapoel Hatzair movement and an athlete in the Petah Tikva High School. In 1962 he earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering at the Technion’s Faculty of Mechanical Engineering; he received his master’s degree in 1968, and his doctorate in 1972. After that, he specialized for three years in the laboratories of the American Air Force and was particularly involved in the study of the structure of titanium-aluminum compounds. In 1975, he joined the faculty of the Technion as head of the Faculty of Materials Engineering. He has been a full professor since 1986. Over the years, he has also served as a visiting professor at the University of Maryland and Johns Hopkins University.