Werner, the son of a factory worker, was born in Alsace. He developed an

interest in chemistry at an early age, and he did his first independent research experiments at age 18. While doing his military service in southern Germany, he attended a series of chemistry lectures, and he subsequently received his PhD at the University of Zurich in Switzerland, where he was appointed professor of chemistry at age 29. He won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1913 for his work on coordination compounds, which he performed as a graduate student and first presented at age 26. Apparently, Werner was so obsessed with solving the riddle of the structure of coordination compounds that his brain continued to work on the problem even while he was asleep. In 1891, when he was only 25, he woke up in the middle of the night and, in only a few hours, had laid the foundation for modern coordination chemistry.

Double salts are molecular compounds formed by the combination of two or more stable compounds in stoichiometric ratio. They exist only in crystal lattices but break down into their constituent compounds when dissolved in water or any other solvent. Their physical and chemical properties remain essentially the same as those of the individual compounds.

Coordination compounds are also formed by the combination of two or more stable compounds in stoichiometric ratio. They retain their identities even when dissolved in water or any other solvent and their properties are completely different from those of the constituents.