science · 12 December 1866 · 158 years ago
birth
Born 12 Dec 1866; died 15 Nov 1919 at age 52.
Swiss chemist whose founding research into the structure of coordination compounds brought him the 1913 Nobel Prize for Chemistry. He demonstrated that stereochemistry was not just the property of carbon compounds, but was general to the whole of chemistry. His theory of chemical coordination (1893) recognized that many metals appeared to show variable valence and form complex compounds. Certain metals, such as cobalt and platinum, were capable through their secondary valences of joining to themselves a certain number of atoms or molecules. These were termed by Werner “coordination compounds.” and the maximum number of atoms (or “ligands” as he called them) that can be joined to the central metal is its coordination number.
OnThisDay.net