Dr. Dan Shechtman, who won the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 2011 and recently announced his campaign for president of Israel, lived in the Dayton area for three years in the 1970s when he worked at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

In a November 2011 article in The Dayton Jewish Observer, Allan Katz recalled that Shechtman, 73 — a professor of materials science at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa — was a National Research Council Fellow in a research laboratory at Wright-Patt.

“He and his family were in Dayton for three years, until he assumed a faculty position at the Technion in 1975,” Katz said.

Shechtman returned to Dayton during the summers of 1976 to 1981 to continue his research on high temperature, advanced metallic materials, Katz said.

“At Wright-Patt, he worked for the same research group leader who hired me into the lab in late 1977,” Katz added. “I first met Danny in summer 1978 and have maintained a professional and personal relationship with him and his family ever since.”

Katz said Shechtman’s wife, Zippi, a professor of education with the University of Haifa, taught at Hillel Academy during their time in Dayton.

“Danny told us that his family was ‘adopted by the Beth Abraham community,’” Katz said.

Shechtman received the Nobel for his discovery of quasicrystals, mosaics of atoms that form regular patterns that never repeat themselves.

In order to run for president, Shechtman needs to win support from at least 10 members of the Israeli Knesset.

The Israeli presidency is a largely ceremonial post currently held by Shimon Peres. If Shechtman wins, he would be the first non-politician to win the post since biophysicist Ephraim Katzir in 1973.

— JNS.org and Marshall Weiss

To read the complete April 2014 Dayton Jewish Observer, click here.