Alfred Werner
Swiss chemist Nobel laureate (1866-1919) · Switzerland · Scientists · Died at 52
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A typical day, 30 days to 15 October 2026
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Something wrong?He cracked the geometry of metal complexes in a field that didn't think geometry mattered, then waited a decade for the Nobel committee to admit inorganic chemistry was real science.
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About this person
Alfred Werner was born 12 December 1866 and studied at ETH Zurich before joining the University of Zurich as a professor. He proposed that transition metal complexes arrange themselves in octahedral configurations - a structural insight that founded modern coordination chemistry and earned him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1913. He was the first inorganic chemist to win the prize, and remained the only one for six decades until 1973. Werner died 15 November 1919.
Scientists from Switzerland 6
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