Chemical Bondage Starry Night

296 _ ____________________ BOOKREVIEWS------------N_A_ru_RE_vo_L_._11_4_21_MAR __ c_H_1_98s Chemical bondage typical, representative, interesting and use and catalysis, in both academic and indus ful or potentially useful and [presents] their trial laboratories, this mammoth work will Geoffrey Wilkinson properties and selected bibliography in an be very useful. It may be regarded as the orderly and systematically indexed Red Bible to supplement the now well Dictionary of Organometallic fashion". Quite a mouthful. The elements known Green Bible, otherwise the nine Compounds, Vols 1,2 and 3. are treated in alphabetical order from silver volume Comprehensive Organometallic Executive editor J. Buckingham. (Ag) to zirconium. Each entry includes Chemistry published by Pergamon in 1982. Chapman & Hall/Methuen: 1984. details of stoichiometry and molecular The latter has discussions of various sorts Pp.3,000. £495, $990. weight, and of some simple properties such in the descriptive text with copious data as form, solubility, thermal and air tables, while the Dictionary is designed to stability, and toxicity, together with a few allow rapid access to limited synthetic and AL THOUGH some organoarsenic com references to synthesis and spectra. The structural information. Readers may pounds were known previously, organo code-numbered compounds are also given notice omissions; thus, out of the 145 man metallic chemistry, in which organic mole their systematic name which many may ganese compounds no simple alkyl, such cules or radicals are bound to metallic find useful; for some of the more compli as Mn(norbornyl)4 or [Mn(CH2SiMe3) 2ln elements by metal-carbon bonds, really cated compounds, trying to work out the is listed. Nevertheless, the editors' choice is originated with two major discoveries name is often a substantial challenge and pretty extensive and doubtless the in the nineteenth century. In 1827, in far more difficult than in organic promised annual supplements will fill in Copenhagen, Zeise discovered the salt chemistry. Structural diagrams are gaps as well as provide extensions. Expen K[PtClC 1H4] whose constitution as an commonly provided and a useful feature is sive though it is, many institutions will have ethylene complex, the first of the so-called that these are repeated in the summary list toacquirethiswork. 0 "n complexes", was not fully established at the beginning of each section. The index until the 1950s. Then in 1845, at a schoolin volume contains full names, molecular Geoffrey Wilkinson is Sir Edward Frankland Hampshire, Frankland discovered the first formulae and CAS registration numbers. Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at Imperial true alkyl, diethylzinc. This discovery not For workers in organometallic chemisty College, University of London. only revealed a new area of chemistry but contributed substantially to the concept of valency. The later discovery of magnesium became animals, religious figures, political reagents by Grignard opened up even more Starry night symbols or tools of the sciences and arts. possibilities as these were easier to handle Some are still in use today; others, like La as synthetic reagents than the flammable Carole Stott Lande's immortalization of his cat, Felis, zinc compounds. The third major class is or Schiller's replacement of the 12 signs of the carbon monoxide compounds, dis Maps of the Heavens. the zodiac by the 12 apostles, were short covered by Schutzenberger and by Mond. By George Sergeant Snyder. lived. Although "carbonyls" are not, by strict Andre Deutsch, London, Abbeville, Snyder's illustrations, which are definition, organometallic, they have New York: 1984. Pp.144. £19.95, $45. predominantly from the sixteenth and metal-to-carbon bonds and carbon mon seventeenth centuries, appear in almost oxide chemistry is now so interlinked THE game of joining the dots is not new. chronological order. Many of them have with that of the alkyls, aryls, olefins, The Babylonians had such a pastime. They been chosen for their beauty, not for their acetylenes and related or derived com drew pictures by joining dots of light, or importance as stepping stones in the history pounds that it has become usual to include rather stars, in the sky. This ancient of celestial cartography; the reader will carbonyls under the general title. tradition was followed by Ptolemy whose search in vain for the influential Islamic Organometallic chemistry thus includes Almagest (circa AD 150) lists over a thou constellations of Al Sufi, the popular and all manner of compounds, many of which sand stars, grouped into 48 pictures or con extensive Uranographia of Bode, and Pic are extremely unusual both in their stellations. Today the sky is divided into colomini's star atlas of 1540 (which was not structure and bonding. During the first an internationally accepted system of 88 only the first printed star atlas but the first half of this century the chemistry was constellations of which the Ptolemaic printed set of maps of the stars, as distinct dominated by organocompounds of the group forms the core. Many of the very from pictures of constellations). Rather, main elements - lithium, magnesium, earliest artistic representations are lost Snyder addresses himself to the colourful mercury, silicon, phosphorus, arsenic and forever, and it is only from the advent of pageantry of celestial mapmaking. so on - and by utilization of magnesium the printing press in the sixteenth century Many of the maps betray their date or and lithium alkyls and aryls in organic that we have examples in abundance. The cultural and religious background through synthesis. Transition-metal organometallic first printed star maps were Diirer's, of the artist's adoption of a certain artistic chemistry developed only after about 1952. 1516, and in the 300 years following, tradition. Here, however, the difference Carbonyl chemistry proceeded essentially artists, mathematicians, cartographers and between the Eastern- and Western-style independently, mostly in pre-war Germany astronomers have all set down their own constellations is only hinted at as all but a through the work of Hieber and his school interpretations of the dots in the sky. handful of the 75 illustrations are from and of Fischer, Tropsch, Roelen, Reppe In Maps of the Heavens, George Snyder, European countries. The joy of the book and others in industry where the use of who is in charge of maps and cartographic is the colourful and realistic photographic transition metal compounds led to the de materials at Sotheby's New York office, reproduction of the maps, which will velopment of new syntheses and to new looks at the evolution of the iconography appeal to a scientific as well as the intended, industrial processes. of constellations in these more recent maps. more popular audience. Each illustration Over the past 35 years these two major The familiar 48 creatures and figures of is captivating in itself, while the streams have, to a large extent, merged, mythology - Pegasus, Andromeda, complementary text, placed adjacent to the and organometallic chemistry today is a Perseus, a lion, a dragon, dogs and bears map, is reminiscent of an extended and major field with its own journals, works of and the rest, all of which Snyder lists - authoritative catalogue entry. Consequently reference and textbooks. The number of were joined by new figures. The the book can be started and finished at a papers and patents published annually has observational work of astronomers such as minimum of 75 different points. D risen from a handful to thousands. Tycho Brahe, the revelations of the This Dictionary provides a list that telescope and voyages to the Southern Carole Stott is Curator ofAstronomy at the Old comprises "those compounds which are in Hemisphere added new stars ready for Royal Observatory at Greenwich, London, part the opinion of the Specialist Editors, i:nost forming into constellations. The stars of the National Maritime Museum. © 1985 Nature Publishing Group.

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