Geoffrey Wilkinson Chemist, Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 1973 (together with E. Fisher). Date of Birth: 14.07.1921 Country: Great Britain

Biography of Geoffrey Wilkinson

Geoffrey Wilkinson was an English chemist who received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1973. He was born near Manchester in a family of a decorator, Henry Wilkinson, and Ruth Crowther, the oldest of three children. He showed an early interest in chemistry, partly influenced by his visits to his uncle's small chemical company. In 1932, he won a scholarship from the county to study at Todmorden Private School, where he excelled in chemistry. In 1939, he graduated from school and received a Royal Scholarship to study at the Imperial College of Science and Technology, University of London. After completing his studies at the Imperial College, Wilkinson stayed there to conduct research for military contracts and then went to Canada, where he joined the Canadian division of the Manhattan Project as a research scientist. He stayed there until 1946 when he received a doctoral scholarship from the Imperial College of Science and Technology and became a nuclear chemist at Ernest O. Lawrence's Radiation Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, which was led by Glenn T. Seaborg. Wilkinson learned to work with the cyclotron that was constructed during the war.

He worked in Berkeley until 1950. During this time, his interests shifted towards inorganic chemistry, and he became a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, where he started studying transition metal compounds. The following year, he became an assistant professor at Harvard University and continued his research for the next five years, including an internship at J. Bjerrum's laboratory in Copenhagen, made possible by a Guggenheim Fellowship.

In 1951, chemists T. J. Kealy and P. L. Pauson, and later S. Miller and his colleagues, synthesized a substance that Robert B. Woodward and his team named ferrocene. This unusual organometallic compound consists of two five-membered cyclopentadienyl rings connected by a single iron atom. Wilkinson, who was working at Harvard at the time, and independently of him, German researcher E. O. Fischer, started studying its structure, aiming to explain the peculiarities of ferrocene and expand knowledge about the structure of transition metal compounds with organic molecules.

In 1952, Wilkinson, in collaboration with Robert B. Woodward, applied the recently developed method of nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. In Wilkinson's own words: "Around 4 p.m. on a Friday afternoon in late January 1952, I went into the library of the Harvard University chemistry department and picked up the latest issue of Nature. When I saw the Kealy and Pauson paper, I already knew what the answer was, as I was, in a sense, prepared for it... on the same Friday evening, Robert Woodward also saw the Kealy and Pauson paper and came to the same conclusion, but by a different route. He was also to some extent prepared for it by his work on cyclopentadiene... On Monday, we... agreed to 'attack' the problem jointly - he from the 'organic side' and I from the 'metallic side'." While Kealy and Pauson believed that the cyclopentadienyl rings of ferrocene are adjacent and connected to the iron atom by a relatively weak bond, Wilkinson and Woodward believed that these two rings lie on top of each other in parallel planes and form a sandwich-like structure with the iron atom in between. Therefore, according to their model, the central metal atom is connected to each of the five carbon atoms in the upper and lower rings. This unusual arrangement explains the remarkable stability of the molecule.

Wilkinson and his students at Harvard University synthesized "sandwich" compounds with CO or NO groups instead of one of the cyclopentadienyl rings. They synthesized "sandwich" derivatives with chromium, vanadium, molybdenum, tungsten, and others. Over time, similar derivatives were prepared with uranium, and later with plutonium, americium, and californium. Organic chemistry merged with nuclear chemistry. In December 1955, Wilkinson returned to London, becoming a professor of inorganic chemistry at the Imperial College of Science and Technology, University of London. At that time, it was the only department of inorganic chemistry in England. Here, Wilkinson continued his studies on transition metals, focusing on ruthenium, rhodium, and osmium. In 1958, Wilkinson incorporated rings of different sizes, specifically seven-membered rings, into "sandwich" molecules.

In 1973, Wilkinson and E. O. Fischer jointly received the Nobel Prize "for their pioneering work, independently of each other, in the chemistry of metallo-organic, so-called sandwich compounds." In his introductory speech on behalf of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Ivar Lindqvist said, "The phenomena that Wilkinson and Fischer observed could be seen by chemists all over the world. However, their adequate interpretation did not emerge until these two scientists came to the conclusion that certain compounds could not be understood without the introduction of a new concept. This concept became known as the concept of 'sandwich' compounds."

The work for which Wilkinson and Fischer received the Nobel Prize stimulated research in various fields of inorganic, organic, and theoretical chemistry. Their research laid the foundation for the development of catalysts used in the production of new high-strength plastics, medicinal drugs (such as those for Parkinson's disease), and lead-free motor fuel, thanks to the creation of more efficient anti-knock agents than tetraethyllead.

This field of chemistry fostered a rapidly growing interest in organometallic compounds, particularly those with carbon-metal bonds. Of particular interest is the relationship of "sandwich" compounds to an important class of substances - metal carbonyls - due to the possibility of interchanging the cyclopentadienyl radical with a carbon monoxide molecule and vice versa, which proved useful for synthetic purposes.

Extensive research on alkyne and alkene complexes of transition metals has led to the emergence of new classes of organometallic compounds. This field of chemistry is currently experiencing rapid progress, and with the use of such organometallic compounds as catalysts, it has become possible to carry out reactions that would previously have been considered impossible. Moreover, such processes are already being used in industry.

The results obtained by Wilkinson and Fischer became the impetus for the creation of modern organometallic chemistry of transition elements, to which they made a significant contribution with their subsequent research.

In 1977, Wilkinson became a lecturer at the University of New South Wales (Australia), and in 1983, he became a lecturer at the Italian and Royal Chemical Societies in London. He authored more than 400 scientific articles.

Works: Modern Inorganic Chemistry. Part 1, 2 / Translated from English. Edited by V.O.Shpikiter. Moscow, 1968; Fundamentals of Inorganic Chemistry / Translated from English. Moscow, 1979 (with F.A.Cotton); The structure of iron biscyclopentadienyl // J. Am. Chem. Soc. 1952. V. 74. (with M.Rosenblum, M.C.Whiting, R.B.Woodward).