Joseph-Achille Le BelLe Bel, Joseph-Achille (b 1847), co-discovered the asymmetric carbon atom, virtually simultaneously with Jacobus H. van’t HoffVan ‘t Hoff, Jacobus Henricus in 1874, both working in the laboratory of Adolphe Wurtz in Paris. Until just before his death, he was never elected to the French Academy of Sciences, due in part to the opposition of Marcellin BerthelotBerthelot, Marcellin. This chapter outlines the lineage of the extremely wealthy Le Bel familyLe Bel family mines and concessions, granted exclusive dealership throughout the AlsaceAlsace/Alsatian of the PechelbronnPechelbronn mined oil products. It focuses specifically on the influence of his uncle by marriage, Jean-Baptiste Boussingault, himself a distinguished chemist, on the young Joseph-Achille. His precocious intellect was discovered early, including his unusual mathematical aptitude, nurtured in the demanding Alsatian education system which facilitated his entry at seventeen into the École PolytechniqueÉcole Polytechnique. Although expected by his family to manage the company, his father’s death in 1867 offered enough flexibility to pursue a career in chemistry. Le Bel did not participate in the Franco-Prussian WarFranco-Prussian war of 1870 since he had resigned his commission as a polytechnicien cadet upon graduation in 1867. In 1869, Le Bel joined the research laboratory of the distinguished chemist Adolphe Wurtz, at the Medical School in Paris. Wurtz was renowned for training a generation of distinguished chemists from many countries. Even in Wurtz’s laboratory, Le Bel kept faith with his deceased father’s dictate and published some research on petroleumPetroleum. Le Bel worked in Wurtz’s laboratory through 1884, the year Wurtz died. He lost considerable research productivity due to the Franco-Prussian WarFranco-Prussian war of 1870 and its aftermath. Van’t HoffVan ‘t Hoff, Jacobus Henricus won the first Nobel PrizeNobel Prize in Chemistry (1901) for his theoretical studies of solutions and their similarities to the behavior of gases, not for the co-discovery of the asymmetric carbon. He was very much a part of the scientific establishment and remained better known than Le Bel. This chapter reminds readers that van’t Hoff’s model was flawed from logical inconsistency while Le Bel’s was correct. The chapter reports other discoveries by Le Bel and follows him through an intellectually and socially rich life until his death in 1930.