Early Mechanisms and Observations

In his chemical autobiography, V. N. Ipatieff describes how he used kaolin as a binder for a graphite tube and discovered that kaolin in the 

Ipatieff explained the observed skeletal isomerization of olefins by readsorption of the olefins and formation of a cyclopropane intermediate, e.g.  

The aluminate formation with some minor variations was also proposed by Sabatier and Reid (4). This theory was recently revived by Topchieva et al. (5). 

Eucken and Wicke (6) proposed a mechanism which necessitates the operation of several sites, and which can be pictured schematically as follows  

The Al—OH gives its proton to the water formed and one of the Al—0 groups receives the proton from the alcohol. 

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