A Dutch professor of chemistry in Amsterdam, and then Leipzig and Berlin, who had studied in Holland, France, and Bonn. He began his research at twenty years of age and his simple theory that the four valency bonds of a carbon atom are directed to the four corners of a tetrahedron explained asymmetrical carbon compounds and established stereochemistry in 1874. In 1886 he explained osmosis, and showed the connection between osmotic and gas pressures, which led to the Arrhenius’ theory of electrolytic dissociation. He received the first Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1901.