physical chemist and first winner of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry (1901) for work on rates of reaction, chemical equilibrium, and osmotic pressure.
   After studies in The Netherlands, he worked briefly under August Kekule at Bonn and then in the Paris laboratory of Charles-Adolphe Wurtz, where he met Joseph-Achille Le Bel. In 1874 he and Le Bel, independently of each other, announced a concept that proved to be the cornerstone in the study of the three-dimensional structure (stereochemistry) of organic compounds: the four chemical bonds that carbon can form are directed to the corners of a tetrahedron. This concept helped explain the property of optical rotation.