Alfred Werner was a Swiss chemist who was a student at ETH Zurich and 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 was the first inorganic chemist to win the Nobel Prize, and the only one prior to 1973. The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1913, announced November 11, 1913. Alfred Werner, “in recognition of 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: born 1866, Mulhouse, France. Wiki link Data: the Nobel Foundation (CC0).