A diborane story

Angewandte Chemie - International Edition

Volumn 39, Issue 12, 2000, Pages 2071-2072

  Laszlo, Pierre ^a,b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF LIÈGE   (Belgium)

^b ECOLE POLYTECHNIQUE   (France)

Author keywords

Borane; History of chemistry; Structure elucidation

Indexed keywords

BORANE DERIVATIVE;

CHEMICAL BOND; CHEMICAL STRUCTURE; HYDROGEN BOND; INFRARED SPECTROSCOPY; SHORT SURVEY;

EID: 0034674355     PISSN: 14337851     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1002/1521-3773(20000616)39:12<2071::AID-ANIE2071>3.0.CO;2-C     Document Type: Short Survey

References (30)

1. P. Laszlo, R. Hoffmann, Angew. Chem. 2000, 112, 127; Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2000, 39, 123.
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5. This letter is held in the Pauling Archive at Oregon State University, in Corvallis.
6. The more so that valence-bond theory provides a fine description of diborane, accounting nicely for the strong boron-boron bond. Pauling was also mistaken in one comment: the force field is overdetermined and the molecular vibrations can be fit without a B-B bond. I am grateful to Roald Hoffmann for this clarification.
7. H. I. Schlesinger, A. B. Burg, Chem. Rev. 1942, 31, 1. Alfred Stock's dogma of an ethane-like structure for diborane also cast its long shadow.
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9. Here is an example: Bernal and Kauffman have shown (including experimentally!) that Edith Humphrey had prepared enantiomerically pure crystals during her Ph.D. in Alfred Werner's Zürich laboratory, which Werner never bothered to make polarimetric measurements on. Had he done so, he would have been provided with an unequivocal proof of the soundness of his coordination theory, for which he won the Nobel Prize: I. Bernal, G. B. Kauffman, J. Chem. Educ. 1987, 67, 604; I. Bernal, The Chemical Intelligencer 1999, 28-31. For priority and multiple discoveries, see P. Laszlo, La découverte scientifique, PUF, Paris, 1999.
10. Here is an example: Bernal and Kauffman have shown (including experimentally!) that Edith Humphrey had prepared enantiomerically pure crystals during her Ph.D. in Alfred Werner's Zürich laboratory, which Werner never bothered to make polarimetric measurements on. Had he done so, he would have been provided with an unequivocal proof of the soundness of his coordination theory, for which he won the Nobel Prize: I. Bernal, G. B. Kauffman, J. Chem. Educ. 1987, 67, 604; I. Bernal, The Chemical Intelligencer 1999, 28-31. For priority and multiple discoveries, see P. Laszlo, La découverte scientifique, PUF, Paris, 1999.
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