Friedrich Karl Johannes Thiele (May 13, 1865 – April 17, 1918) was a German chemist and a prominent professor at several universities, including those in Munich and Strasbourg.

[4] Thiele studied mathematics at the University of Breslau but later turned to chemistry, receiving his doctorate from Halle in 1890 .

[6] After Kekulé's proposal for benzene structure in 1865, Thiele suggested a "Partial Valence Hypothesis", which concerned double and triple carbon-carbon bonds with which he explains their particular reactivity.

With his associate Otto Holzinger, he synthesised an iminodibenzyl nucleus: two benzene rings attached together by a nitrogen atom and an ethylene bridge.

According to one of his students Heinrich Otto Wieland, Thiele had a dislike of the chemistry of natural products.