History

Victor Grignard discovered Grignard reagents in 1912 and won a noble prize for this discovery.

The first synthesised organometallic was actually made by L.Cadet, a French chemist in 1760. He made a nasty smelling liquid (it was named dicacodyl later) whilst trying to make invisible ink.

The point at which organometallic chemistry really started to become known and recognised as a ÔbranchÕ of chemistry was in 1848 when Edward Frankland first synthesised organo zinc compound by adding zinc metal and organohalides together

It was not until the discovery of Grignard reagents in 1900 that the term organometallics was used for compounds containing direct carbon-metal bonds. In 1898 Victor Grignard was a student under Philippe Barbier at Lyon University. He was asked to repeat experiments to make tertiary alcohols from a mixture of methyl heptyl ketone, magnesium and methyl iodide. Instead he treated the iodide with the magnesium first and then carried out the reaction in ether. Thus the first Grignard reagent was made and in 1912 he was rewarded with a Nobel prize.

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