Earl Muetterties

Leonard Earl Muetterties ( born June 23, 1927 in Elgin, Illinois, † January 12, 1984 in Oakland, California ) was an American chemist. The focus of his scientific work was in the fields of Bora chemistry, homogeneous catalysis, heterogeneous catalysis and fluctuating processes in organometallic complexes.

Life and work

Muetterties studied chemistry at Northwestern University, where he earned his bachelor's degree in 1949. Under the guidance of Charles Brown and Eugene G. Rochow at Harvard University, he completed a doctorate on boron -nitrogen compounds.

After graduating in 1952, he took a job at the central research by DuPont, where he was promoted in 1955 to the Research Supervisor. Its first working lay on the area of the inorganic fluorine compounds, particularly those of sulfur and phosphorus. In collaboration with William Dale Phillips, he used the nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy for the study of dynamic processes in inorganic fluorine compounds.

His work on Borhydridcluster led to various polyhedral borane anions as B12H122 -. Furthermore, he examined π -allyl-, fluoroalkyl and Borhydridkomplexe of the transition metals. His research he extended to the study of stereochemically dynamic complexes. In 1965 he was associate director of the Central Research at DuPont. In addition to working groups in homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysis, he founded research groups to study the synthesis and spectroscopy of organometallic complexes.

Muetterties ' academic career began with a supplementary teaching position at Princeton University from 1967 to 1969 and later at the University of the Pennsylvania based 1969 to 1973. Together with the Monell Chemical Senses Center, he examined vertebrate pheromones. After a two-month lectureship at Cambridge University in 1972, he took in 1973 to a professorship at Cornell University, where he specialized in the field of organometallic chemistry and homogeneous catalysis, sometimes in collaboration with Roald Hoffmann.

In 1979 he went to the University of California at Berkeley, where he continued his work on homogeneous catalysis and cluster chemistry. He extended his field of work in Berkley on the surface chemistry.

Muetterties supported publication of the ACS journal Inorganic Chemistry and Organometallics. He was on the Board of the journal Inorganic Syntheses and published the 10th edition. In addition, he published books on boron chemistry and Übergangsmetallhydride and reviews wrote on complexes with unusual coordination numbers. A work on his contributions was published posthumously.

Works (selection)

• Leonard Earl Muetterties (Editor): Transition Metal Hydrides, 342 pages, published by Dekker, 1972, ISBN 0-8247-1470-9.
• Leonard Earl Muetterties (Editor): Boron Hydride Chemistry, 532 pages, published by Academic Press Inc., 1975, ISBN 0-12-509650- X.