Henry Taube

Henry Taube ( born November 30, 1915 in Neudorf, Saskatchewan, † November 16, 2005 in Palo Alto, California ) was an American chemist. He received the 1983 Nobel Prize for Chemistry, because it has been able to elucidate the reaction mechanisms of electron transfer in metal complexes.

Life

Henry Taube was born in the Canadian city Neudorf in the province of Saskatchewan. He studied chemistry at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon and then moved to the University of California at Berkeley. His doctorate was in 1940 and 1952, he was appointed to a professorship of inorganic chemistry at Stanford University. In 1978 he became head of the Department of Chemistry at Stanford University.

Dove mainly dealt with the transfer of electrons between ions in chemical reactions. He mainly developed theoretical models of the process that had a fundamental significance for the later research.

In the 1960s and 1970s, his works have focused on the reactions in the electron transfer from transition metals in solutions. He could explain this is that there are two different ways of electron transfer, which he described as outer-sphere mechanism and inner-sphere mechanism. To distinguish it laid the consideration of the ions involved should be applied as the outer-sphere mechanism is done by reducing the transmission Sion Sion on the oxidation energetically below the activation barrier. This is due to each other due to the proximity of the ions and the reconfiguration of the charge in the respective area ( inner coordination sphere ) with ions of different charge.

In the inner-sphere mechanism, which he studied intensively the example of the Creutz-Taube complex, he could explain the role of the coordination sphere. Here is a ligand of this environment acts as a " bridge " between the ions, which exchange electrons. Dove was able to prove that this bridge function particularly effectively occurs in organic intermediaries compared to simple inorganic compounds.