Dan Shechtman

Dan Shechtman was born in 1941 in Tel Aviv

Dan Shechtman was born in Tel Aviv on January 24, 1941, and grew up in Ramat Gan and Petah Tikva. His parents were Yitzhak and Netanya Shechtman, and his grandparents came to the land during the Second Aliyah. As a child he read Jules Verne's The Mysterious Island many times and wanted to become an engineer.

He attended Brenner High School in Petah Tikva and began studying at the Technion in 1962. He earned a B.Sc. in mechanical engineering in 1966, an M.Sc. in materials engineering in 1968 and a Ph.D. in 1972. He then spent 3 years studying titanium aluminum compounds at U.S. Air Force laboratories in Ohio.

In 1975 he joined the Technion's materials engineering department. During a sabbatical in 1981 to 1983 he found a crystal pattern with fivefold symmetry, which was thought impossible at the time. His 1984 paper met strong opposition, including from Linus Pauling, but later work confirmed the finding and opened a new field of research.

He joined the faculty of Iowa State University in 2004 and heads the Wolfson Center at the Technion. In 2014 he ran for President of Israel and received 1 vote. That year he also began co-hosting a science show for children on Israeli Educational Television.

He is married to Professor Tzipora Shechtman of the University of Haifa. They have a son and 3 daughters.