Alfred Werner

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Alfred Werner (December 12, 1866 - November 15, 1919) was a German chemist who was a professor at the University of Zurich. He won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1913 for proposing the octahedral configuration of transition metal complexes. Werner developed the basis for modern coordination chemistry. He also discovered hexol.

[edit] Octet rule

In 1893, Werner showed that the number of atoms or groups associated with a central atom is often 4 or 6, the “co-ordination number” in which other coordination numbers up to a maximum of 8 occur, but less often. On these views, and other similar views, in 1904 Richard Abegg formulated what is now known as Abegg's rule which states that that the difference between the maximum positive and negative valence of an element is frequently eight. This rule was used later in 1916 when Gilbert Lewis formulated the “octet rule” in his cubical atom theory.

[edit] External links

• Biography at Nobelprize.org
• The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1913 - short article about his work on the linkage of atoms in molecules by which he has thrown new light on earlier investigations and opened up new fields of research especially in inorganic chemistry.
• Alfred Werner – Biography.