Retro News & Views

The old catalysis literature still has much to offer to the research community. This issue presents a selection of retro News & Views articles that highlight some key historical developments in the subareas of catalysis.

Methods for the direct one-step replacement of a hydrogen atom in a C–H bond by an organic functional group can create enormous possibilities for synthetic applications. On the way to solve this challenge, the discovery of the reaction of organopalladium complexes with olefins opened a new era in catalysis and organic chemistry.

The Haber–Bosch process was introduced at the beginning of the twentieth century; however, its mechanism remained controversial for many years. Thus, a comprehensive mechanistic picture was provided in the eighties.

To produce chemicals and fuels from CO₂ and water while storing excess energy from renewable resources will play a big role in sustainability. Three decades ago, we learned that copper possesses the unique ability to break the stable CO₂ bonds and to form C–C bonds, a key step towards higher-value products.

More than 35 years ago, telomerase activity was discovered by Elizabeth H. Blackburn and Carol W. Greider. Today, this enzyme is a promising approach to curing some age-related diseases as well as cancer, but it took time for telomerase to be in the spotlight.

Harnessing a clean, affordable and inexhaustible source of energy is an immense scientific challenge. Scientists moved a step closer in 1972 when the first practical device for direct solar power-to-fuel conversion was reported.

This issue presents a selection of retro News & Views articles that highlight the historical development of some spectroscopic and analytical techniques that might not be the most popular, but have nonetheless provided an important contribution to the elucidation of catalytic reactions.

Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) is a phenomenon at the heart of very important tools in analytical chemistry and medical diagnostics. Thirty-five years ago, Clifford Russell Bowers and Daniel Weitekamp developed the PASADENA experiment — an ingenious chemical scheme that boosts sensitivity of proton NMR by three orders of magnitude, widening the applicability of NMR altogether.

Sensitive and isomer-specific analytical tools detect elusive intermediates and reveal reaction mechanisms. Photoelectron photoion coincidence spectroscopy, introduced in 1966, now serves as a reaction microscope, identifies intermediates, and delineates gaseous and surface-confined processes in heterogeneous catalysis.

In the context of probing electrocatalytic systems, quartz crystal microbalance measurements, initially developed in 1959, provided the base for measuring mass changes at the electrode–electrolyte interface under reaction conditions.