Joseph Achille Le Bel

Chemist, born in Pechelbronn, NE France. He studied at the Ecole Polytechnique, and the Sorbonne, became an industrial consultant, and continued research on his private estate. In 1874 he published his account of the asymmetric carbon atom, two months after Jacobus van't Hoff's identical but independent work was published, giving Hoff the priority in this fundamental stereochemical concept.

Joseph Achille Le Bel (1847-1930), was a French Chemist, who was best known for his work in Stereochemistry. He was born on January 21, 1847 in Péchelbronn and educated at the École Polytechnique in Paris. In 1874 he announced his theory outlining the relationship between molecular structure and optical activity, which laid the foundation of the science of Stereochemistry, dealing with the spatial arrangement of atoms in molecules.