Leopold von Pebal was an Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

n chemist

Chemist

A chemist is a scientist trained in the study of chemistry. Chemists study the composition of matter and its properties such as density and acidity. Chemists carefully describe the properties they study in terms of quantities, with detail on the level of molecules and their component atoms...

.

Pebal was a professor at the University of Lemberg until 1865, after which he became a professor at the University of Graz

University of Graz

The University of Graz , a university located in Graz, Austria, is the second-largest and second-oldest university in Austria....

. He planned the new chemistry laboratory in Graz

Graz

The more recent population figures do not give the whole picture as only people with principal residence status are counted and people with secondary residence status are not. Most of the people with secondary residence status in Graz are students...

, which was finished in 1878. Adolph Wurtz was sent by the French government to report about the laboratory. The possibility that the institute would be divided into two independent institutes troubled Pebal, but with the help of colleagues the problems were resolved.

Pebal was murdered by an employee of the University in front of his laboratory, where he died shortly after the attack.