Alfred Werner

Alfred Werner (1866-1919), French-born Swiss chemist, and Nobel laureate. Werner's application of geometry to chemistry helped identify the structure of molecular compounds. Werner won the 1913 Nobel Prize for chemistry, for his work on compounds.

Werner was born in Mulhouse, France. He studied chemistry and organic chemistry before entering the Polytechnikum in Zürich, where he received his doctoral degree in 1890.

Werner's key contributions were in the field of stereochemistry, the branch of chemistry dealing with the three-dimensional shape of a molecule. In 1893 Werner conceived and wrote his famous and controversial coordination theory in one day. However, he spent almost 20 years accumulating a definitive proof for his ideas, which represented a break with the classical theories of molecular structure. Finally he was able to provide a logical explanation for known compounds and also to predict series of unknown compounds in 1913. Werner was the first to show that stereochemistry is a general phenomenon in organic as well as inorganic chemistry. The implications and applications of his research have been of great value in biochemistry, and in analytical, organic, and physical chemistry, as well as in such related sciences as mineralogy and crystallography.