Reinventing American Inorganic Chemistry, 1950-2000

Of the more than 1250 published research papers of F.A. Cotton, only a highly restricted subset could be chosen for this volume. Those included are mainly centred around the following topics, in which his work was seminal: metal carbonyl compounds, including their infrared spectra, bonding and fluxional behaviour; organometallic compounds, especially fluxional ones but also additional aspects such as C-H...M interactions; metal atom cluster compounds; compounds with multiple bonds between metal atoms; and studies of the electronic structures of transition metal complexes. These reprints are embedded in a matrix of informative comment dealing with the context of interest and knowledge at the time they were published, as well as with the course of subsequent developments. This volume aims to illustrate the enormous growth and evolution of inorganic chemistry in the United States in the second half of the 20th century.