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Alfred Werner
1866–1919 · Switzerland · Born in the 1800s
Nobel Chemistry 1913
Created coordination chemistry, explaining the structure of metal complexes through primary and secondary valences.
Nobel Prize work
Nobel 1913 “in recognition of his work on the linkage of atoms in molecules by which he has thrown new light on earlier investigations and opened up new fields of research especially in inorganic chemistry.” Werner proposed that a metal centre binds a fixed number of ligands in a definite geometry (octahedral for six), predicting cis/trans isomers of complexes like — and resolving optically active confirmed it. His coordination theory turned inorganic chemistry from a catalogue of puzzling “molecular compounds” into a structural science.