Even before the advent of chemical atoms, Natural Philosophers intuited that matter is inherently three-dimensional. TheophrastusTheophrastus (4th BCE) was already a master of MineralogyMineralogy and sorted “Stones” based on shape, color, hardness, and many other observable characteristicsPliny the Elder. Pliny the Elder (23–79 CE) compiled a massive Natural History, included details about hundreds of minerals, and organized the stones into similarity groups. The foundational document for modern MineralogyMineralogy is De Natura FossiliumDe Natura Fossilium written by Georgius AgricolaAgricola, Georgius (1494–1555) in 1546. René DescartesDescartes, René (1596–1650) was a master geometer who applied his novel insights to the structure of matter. Descartes was fully aware of the unique shapes associated with macroscopic crystals and of the mathematics needed to describe them. Robert HookeHooke, Robert (1635–1703) observed the unique geometry of the faces of such crystals in his MicrographiaMicrographia (1665). The greatest mineralogist of the eighteenth century in France was Louis Jean-Marie DaubentonDaubenton, Louis Jean-Marie (1716–1800) at the Museum of Natural HistoryMuseum of natural history (Paris) in the Jardin du RoiJardin du Roi in Paris. He was a mentor to René Just HaüyHaüy, René Just (1743–1822). In 1784, Haüy took these nascent ideas and constructed a full three-dimensional theory of the crystalline state. Many classes of crystals exhibit optical rotation. Such symmetries are called “chiral.” They lack a “center of symmetry,” and can be either dextrorotatoryDextrorotatory or levorotatoryLevorotatory. A selection of chiral crystals taken from Haüy’s classicTraité de Minéralogie Traité de Minéralogie (1801) will be presented and discussed in terms of their symmetry. Haüy proposed that, in addition to the macroscopic symmetry of the crystal, there was a microscopicUnit cell “unit cell” with the same symmetry. During the nineteenth century crystallographers developed the full theory of macroscopic crystals. Haüy’s successor at the Museum was Gabriel DelafosseDelafosse, Gabriel (1796–1878). He was the thesis advisor of Louis PasteurPasteur, Louis (1822–1895). Pasteur used the techniques of crystallographyCrystallography to understand the existence of both dextro- and levorotatory crystals of tartaric acidTartaric acid salt in 1860. The complete groundwork for the elucidation of the optical activityOptical activity of organic molecules was available to Le Bel and van’t Hoff more than a decade before their “discovery.”