Le Bel–Van't Hoff Rule

Recently, I had a research need to check the possible number of stereoisomers of compounds and went back to the fundamental organic chemistry's Le Bel–Van't Hoff Rule, which says that the number of stereoisomers of an organic compound containing no internal planes of symmetry is 2ⁿ, where n represents the number of asymmetric carbon atoms.

References:

1. Joseph Achille Le Bel (1874). Bulletin de la Société Chimique de Paris. 22: 337–347 
2. Jacobus HenricusVan't Hoff  (1874).  Archives Néerlandaises des Sciences Exactes et Naturelles. 9: 445–454.

And interestingly, I found two of my advisors both obtained the award of Grand Prix Achille-Le-Bel set up by French Chemical Society since 1976.


Robert  Corriu (1985), Université de Montpellier 
Joel Moreau (2013), Université de Montpellier

A rule of ~150 years old still holds up true! and useful!