History
Coordination complexes were known – although not understood in any sense – since the beginning of chemistry, e.g. Prussian blue and copper vitriol. The key breakthrough occurred when Alfred Werner proposed in 1893 that Co(III) bears six ligands in an octahedral geometry. His theory allows one to understand the difference between coordinated and ionic in a compound, for example chloride in the cobalt ammine chlorides and to explain many of the previously inexplicable isomers.
In 1914, Werner resolved the first coordination complex, called hexol, into optical isomers, overthrowing the theory that only carbon compounds could possess chirality.
Read more about this topic: Coordination Complex
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“A great proportion of the inhabitants of the Cape are always thus abroad about their teaming on some ocean highway or other, and the history of one of their ordinary trips would cast the Argonautic expedition into the shade.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The history of all previous societies has been the history of class struggles.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“There is nothing truer than myth: history, in its attempt to “realize” myth, distorts it, stops halfway; when history claims to have “succeeded” this is nothing but humbug and mystification. Everything we dream is “realizable.” Reality does not have to be: it is simply what it is.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)