While Israeli Nobel laureate Dan Schechtman was being celebrated in Sweden this week for his work in chemistry, another of his lesser-known talents was revealed: The professor renowned for his discovery of quasi-crystals is also a jewelry designer whose work caught the eye of the queen of Sweden herself. At a cocktail party at Stockholm's city hall on Saturday celebrating Schechtman and this year's other Noble laureates, the scientist and his wife, Tzipora, were seen engrossed in conversation with King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden and his Queen Silvia. "The king looked at Tzipi and was very impressed by one of her pieces of jewelry," Schechtman said. "The queen also took great interest in the piece. The king asked Tzipi where she bought it, and she replied that I designed it for her. Right then and there I offered to create a piece for the queen, an offer the king accepted." Schechtman was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry for his discovery of quasi-crystals chemical structures that, contrary to years of conventional wisdom, are not arranged periodically. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said Schechtman's discovery in 1982 fundamentally changed the way chemists look at solid matter. For three decades, Schechtman encountered objections from within the scientific community that were so strong he was even kicked out of his research group. In another sign of respect to the Israeli scientist, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday donned a quasi-crystal-patterned necktie. "Do you see this necktie? These are Professor Dan Schechtman's quasi-crystals," Netanyahu said. "He discovered something that was apparently impossible, clung to it, proved it and [Saturday] he received world recognition, both from the scientific world and the world at large, and was the sole winner of the Nobel Prize in chemistry." The prime minister's necktie is a limited-edition piece originally commissioned by Professor Peretz Lavie, president of the Technion Israel Institute of Technology, in honor of Schechtman's birthday, in January. The tie was released early to coincide with Schechtman's Nobel Prize win. "[Schechtman] told me that he explicitly praises our investment in higher education and the advancement of centers of excellence and other projects, and that he feels a change in this government, our government," Netanyahu said. "I am certain that this change will lead to yet more Nobel laureates."
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