Organic Chemistry of the Metals

Abstract

A DISCUSSION on recent advances in the organic chemistry of the metals, which had special reference to the transitional metals, was held in Section B (Chemistry) during the Cambridge meeting of the British Association. It was opened by Dr. F. G. Mann, who said that recent advances in the organic chemistry of the metals are so numerous and cover so wide a field that any attempt to deal comprehensively with them in the brief time available would become a mere catalogue of individual investigations. The most important advance, which in his opinion was the investigations (mainly by Hans Fischer and his co-workers) into the structure and synthesis of the porphyrins, was, however, too specialized and too complicated for suitable treatment on that occasion ; he therefore limited his own contribution to an account of certain polynuclear metallic compounds, since this work was largely carried out in Cambridge, and its discussion, which followed logically from Prof. C. S. Gibson's presidential address to Section B, involved certain questions of chemical linkage which are of fundamental and therefore general interest.