Alfred Werner

His mother had converted from Protestantism to Catholicism and thus, he was raised as Roman Catholic. In spite of his Catholic upbringing, Werner’s inclination towards religion was minimal in his later life.

In 1894, he married Emma Gieskerand and became a naturalized Swiss citizen thereafter. A son, Alfred and a daughter, Charlotte were born to them.

His health began to deteriorate at an early age and by 1913, he was suffering from arteriosclerosis of the brain which was further aggravated by his excessive drinking and long working hours. The condition forced him to give up his general lectures in 1915 and in 1919, he gave up his Professorship.

Alfred Werner was born on December 12, 1866, in Mulhouse, Alsace in France. He was the fourth and youngest child born to Jean-Adam Werner and his second wife, Salomé Jeanette Tesché. His father worked as a foundry worker and was a former locksmith whereas his mother hailed from a wealthy family.

At the time of his birth Alsace was annexed by Germany but his family continued to speak French. His political and cultural sympathies were with France which induced a spirit of rebellion and resistance in him.

His did schooling at the “ÉcoleLibre des Frères” in Mulhouse from 1872 to 1878. He then studied Chemistry at “École Professionelle” until 1885. His interest in Chemistry began to nurture from here which prompted him to conduct his first chemical research at the age of 18.

He spent one year of compulsory military service in Karlsruhe during which he attended lectures at “Technische Hochschule” [Technical High School].

In 1886, he joined “Eidgenössisches Polytechnikum” [Swiss Federal Institute of Technology] in Zurich and obtained a Diploma in Technical Chemistry in 1889.

After getting his Diploma, Werner got a job of an Assistant in Professor Georg Lunge’s laboratory at the Zurich Technical High School. His collaboration with Professor Arthur Hantzsch yielded his first research publication, ‘Überräumliche Anordnungen der Atome in stickstoffhaltigen Molekülen’ (1890), which was also his doctoral dissertation.

In his dissertation, he extended Joseph Achille Le Bel and Jacobus Henricusvan't Hoff's concept of the tetrahedral carbon compound to the nitrogen compound that explained many cases of geometrically isomeric trivalent nitrogen derivatives. It was met with dissent by Victor Meyer, Karl von Auwers, Eugen Bamberger, and others but now stands as one of the cornerstones of stereochemistry.

His second paper was his Habilitationsschrift [an original article required to qualify for a teaching position at a university] titled ‘Beiträgezur Theorie der Affinität und Valenz’ (1891) that focused on the theory of affinity and valence. In this article, he replaced August Kekulé’s concept of rigidly directed valences with a more flexible approach where affinity was viewed as a variously divisible, attractive force emanating from the center of an atom and acting equally in all directions.

For a brief period, he worked on thermo-chemical studies with Marcellin Berthelot at the “Collège de France” in Paris, but later returned to the Technical High School as a Privatdocent [unsalaried lecturer] in 1892. While working on his thesis, he laid the groundwork for his work on spatial relationships of atoms.

His third, and perhaps most important, technical paper, ‘Beitragzur Konstitutionanorganischer Verbindungen’, was published in 1893 in which he had proposed the basic postulates of his coordination theory. It was based on a “dream” where he came up with the solution to “molecular compounds”. The article, conceived despite his limited knowledge of inorganic chemistry, made him an overnight success.

Werner’s most significant work lies in the field of coordination chemistry. He was the first person to propose that coordination compounds containing complex ions could have correct structures. With this insight, chemists could rationalize the number of isomers of coordination compounds which led to new fields of research in organic chemistry.

He also finds a place in the history of the periodic table. In 1905, he separated the lanthanide elements [atomic numbers 58 -71] from others and reorganized the table which is used even today.