Photo credit: Oslo Museum via DigitaltMuseum — Wikimedia Commons · CC BY 3.0
Odd Hassel
1897–1981 · Norway · Born in the 1800s
Nobel Chemistry 1969
Norwegian chemist who founded conformational analysis, explaining how three-dimensional molecular shapes govern chemical behaviour.
Nobel Prize work
Through electron-diffraction studies of cyclohexane and its derivatives, he established the concept of conformation and its chair, boat and axial/equatorial forms, applying it across chemistry.