Prize Announcement

Announcement of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry by Professor Staffan Normark, Permanent Secretary of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, on 5 October 2011. Detailed information about the Nobel Laureate's work was presented by Professor Emeritus Lars Thelander and Professor Sven Lidin.

Following the announcement, Professor Sven Lidin, Member of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, showed freelance journalist Joanna Rose how two dimensional quasicrystals fit according to certain rules understandable in terms of Penrose tiling, and how, nevertheless, "the world was completely unprepared for the discovery of Dan Shechtman that such aperiodic beasts could actually exist also in solid matter." He also defined quasicrystals, describing what makes them special, and emphasized why their discovery is an example of how science should be conducted.