Alfred Werner was a chemist and educator whose accomplishments included the development of the coordination theory of chemistry. This theory, in which Werner proposed revolutionary ideas about how atoms and molecules are linked together, was formulated in a span of only three years, from 1890 to 1893. The remainder of his career was spent gathering the experimental support required to validate his new ideas. For his work on the linkage of atoms and his coordination theory, Werner became the first Swiss chemist to win the Nobel Prize.

Werner was born December 12, 1866, in Mulhouse, a small community in the French province of Alsace. He was the last of four children born to Jean-Adam Werner, a factory foreman and farmer, and Salome Jeanette Tesche, daughter of a wealthy German family. Alsace was French when Werner was born but was annexed into Germany during the Franco-Prussian war. Although the Werner family maintained strong...