Louis Pasteur could rightly be described as the first stereochemist, having observed in 1842 that salts of tartaric acid collected from wine production vessels could rotate plane polarized light, but that salts from other sources did not.
Pode dicirse que Louis Pasteur foi o primeiro estereoquímico, porque observou en 1849 que os sales de ácido tartárico extraídos dos recipientes para a produción de viño podían facer rotar o plano da luz polarizada, pero que sales procedentes doutras fontes non.