Daniel Shechtman 's discovery was like the fall of the Berlin Wall , a scientist says . Mueller , a principle research scientist at MIT , said he was `` fascinated '' by the structure of quasicrystals , even as he admitted he would not have the knowledge to analyze them himself . Shechtman ` ` tore apart what we thought we knew , '' Peter Mueller of MIT says . Islamic prayer patterns thousands of years old help explain the discovery . The Nobel Prize in Chemistry is worth about $ 100 million .
Daniel Shechtman 's discovery was like the fall of the Berlin Wall , a scientist says . Shechtman ` ` tore apart what we thought we knew , '' Peter Mueller of MIT says . Islamic prayer patterns thousands of years old help explain the discovery . The Nobel Prize in Chemistry is worth about $ 100 million .