A HALF-CENTURY OF CYCLOHEPTATRIENYLMETAL CHEMISTRY: EXPERIMENT AND THEORY

Abstract

Bruce King joined Gordon Stone's research group at Harvard University in 1957 and initiated his research on synthetic transition metal organometallic chemistry. The work that he presented at the Stone Symposium evolved during more than a half-century from his 1959 discovery of the sandwich compound (η⁵-C₅H₅)V(η⁷-C₇H₇) while a student in Gordon Stone's Harvard laboratory. After leaving Gordon's research group Bruce King continued synthetic studies on cycloheptatrienylmetal compounds. This led to the discovery of the first trihapto derivatives (η⁵-C₅H₅)Mo(CO)₂(η³-C₇H₇) and (η³-C₇H₇)Co(CO)₃, while working at the Mellon Institute (now Carnegie-Mellon University) in the 1960s. Bruce King then continued work in synthetic inorganic and organometallic chemistry and related experimental work at the University of Georgia until the late 1990s, when he closed down his experimental (“wet chemistry”) laboratory to concentrate on theoretical and mathematical chemistry. At that time he initiated collaborative work in various areas of computational inorganic and organometallic chemistry, including density functional theory studies of cycloheptatrienylmetal derivatives related to some of his early synthetic successes noted above. Bruce King's work in computational inorganic chemistry evolved and expanded greatly in collaboration with groups at several Chinese universities and he now holds several adjunct academic appointments in China. The computational part of the research presented here is in collaboration with Prof. Hongyan Wang at Southwest Jiaotong University in Chengdu, China, and Prof. Xuejin Feng at Jiangnan University in Wuxi, China.