The beginnings of organometallic chemistry

Shortly before Grignard developed the chemistry of organomagnesium compounds in his laboratory, Mond discovered nickel carbonyl. As a young engineer in a plant where water gas was used to prepare hydrogen, he tackled the formidable problem of corrosion of iron installations in contact with the gases produced by this process. Replacing this metal with nickel, he found that, to his great surprise, things weren't much better. Puzzled, he looked for the cause and discovered nickel carbonyl [Ni(CO) ₄ ].

This compound was very intriguing at the time, as Werner had not yet developed his ideas on transition metal complexes.

We now know that, in nickel carbonyl, the metal is bonded to the carbon, and we consider this compound to be the starting point of organometallic transition metal chemistry. It wasn't...