Le Bel, << luh BEHL, >> Joseph Achille (1847-1930), a French industrial chemist, discovered that molecules are three-dimensional. Chemists had observed that certain organic compounds, having apparently the same formula, reacted differently to polarized light. Le Bel showed that the arrangement of atoms in these compounds varies, and accounts for the differences in behavior. Working independently, he and Jacobus H. van’t Hoff of the Netherlands published this theory about the arrangement of atoms almost simultaneously. Le Bel was born in Alsace.
