Lithium discovery

At the time of the petalite analysis, Arfwedson was 25 years old. Berzelius was 38, and ought not yet to have got tired of fame and honor. I n 1803 he had discovered cerium and in 1817, the year of the lithium discovery, he had found and named the element selenium. It would have been tempting to add the element lithium as further scalp to the collection, at least in the form of shared priority with Arfwedson. It is also quite clear that Berzelius contribution to the element discovery was considerable. In science history Arfwedson alone is stated as discoverer of lithium. This was... 

The use of alkaU metals for anionic polymerization of diene monomers is primarily of historical interest. A patent disclosure issued in 1911 (16) detailed the use of metallic sodium to polymerize isoprene and other dienes. Independentiy and simultaneously, the use of sodium metal to polymerize butadiene, isoprene, and 2,3-dimethyl-l,3-butadiene was described (17). Interest in alkaU metal-initiated polymerization of 1,3-dienes culminated in the discovery (18) at Firestone Tire and Rubber Co. that polymerization of neat isoprene with lithium dispersion produced high i7j -l,4-polyisoprene, similar in stmcture and properties to Hevea natural mbber (see ELASTOLffiRS,SYNTHETic-POLYisoPRENE Rubber, natural). 

Interest in the synthesis of diamond [7782-40-3] was first stimulated by Lavoisier s discovery that diamond was simply carbon it was also observed that diamond, when heated at 1500—2000°C, converted into graphite [7782-42-5]. In 1880, the British scientist Haimay reported (1) that he made diamond from hydrocarbons, bone oil, and lithium, but no one has been able to repeat this feat (2). About the same time, Moissan beheved (3) that he made diamond from hot molten mixtures of iron and carbon, but his experiments could not be repeated (4,5). 

A major advance in the art of effecting Birch reductions was the discovery by Wilds and Nelson that lithium reduced aromatic steroids much more efficiently than had hitherto been possible with sodium or potassium. The superiority originally was attributed to the somewhat higher reduction potential of lithium as compared to the other alkali metals. Later work showed that the following explanation is more probable. ... 

The alkali metals form a homogeneous group of extremely reactive elements which illustrate well the similarities and trends to be expected from the periodic classification, as discussed in Chapter 2. Their physical and chemical properties are readily interpreted in terms of their simple electronic configuration, ns, and for this reason they have been extensively studied by the full range of experimental and theoretical techniques. Compounds of sodium and potassium have been known from ancient times and both elements are essential for animal life. They are also major items of trade, commerce and chemical industry. Lithium was first recognized as a separate element at the beginning of the nineteenth eentury but did not assume major industrial importance until about 40 y ago. Rubidium and caesium are of considerable academic interest but so far have few industrial applications. Francium, the elusive element 87, has only fleeting existence in nature due to its very short radioactive half-life, and this delayed its discovery until 1939. 

The third aspect, the stability range of solid electrolytes, is of special concern for alkaline-ion conductors since only a few compounds show thermodynamic stability with, e.g., elemental lithium. Designing solid electrolytes by considering thermodynamic stability did lead to very interesting compounds and the discovery of promising new solid electrolytes such as the lithium nitride halides [27]. However, since solid-state reactions may proceed very slowly at low temperature, metasta-... 

Enantiomerically pure /J-keto sulfoxides are prepared easily via condensation of a-lithiosulfinyl carbanions with esters. Reduction of the carbonyl group in such /J-keto sulfoxides leads to diastereomeric /J-hydroxysulfoxides. The major recent advance in this area has been the discovery that non-chelating hydride donors (e.g., diisobutylaluminium hydride, DIBAL) tend to form one /J-hydroxysulfoxide while chelating hydride donors [e.g., lithium aluminium hydride (LAH), or DIBAL in the presence of divalent zinc ions] tend to produce the diastereomeric /J-hydroxysulfoxide. The level of diastereoselectivity is often very high. For example, enantiomerically pure /J-ketosulfoxide 32 is reduced by LAH in diethyl ether to give mainly the (RR)-diastereomer whereas DIBAL produces exclusively the (.S R)-diastereomer (equation 30)53-69. A second example is shown in... 

Finally, the use of simple valence bond theory has led recently to a significant discovery concerning the nature of metals. Many years ago one of us noticed, based on an analysis of the experimental values of the saturation ferromagnetic moment per atom of the metals of the iron group and their alloys, that for a substance to have metallic properties, 0.72 orbital per atom, the metallic orbital, must be available to permit the unsynchronized resonance that confers metallic properties on a substance.34 38 Using lithium as an example, unsynchronized resonance refers to such structures as follows. 

Examples abound regarding the role of serendipity in the discovery of new therapeutic approaches, which on closer examination usually turned out to be the result of clinicians paying attention to unexpected clinical effects rather than discounting them. For example, lithium was tried first for hypertension, chlorpro-mazine was initially developed as an anesthetic, and imipramine was originally regarded as an antihistamine and an antipsychotic agent. Without astute clinical observations, these drugs would not have found their niche, nor would clozapine have been revived for the benefit of millions of the most difficult to treat schizophrenic patients. Other examples include the expanded indications of newer... 

Aromaticity of the products is only one of the factors accounting for the efficiency of these cyclizations as evidenced by the discovery of a dianionic synthesis of nonaromatic 5-membered heterocycles by Tamao and coworkers who found that reduction of bis(phenylethynyl)dialkylsilanes with lithium naphthalenide resulted in formation of a cyclized product by endo-endo cyclization15 (Scheme 7). 

The recent discovery that acetylated glycopyranosyl bromides may be reduced in high yields with lithium aluminum hydride to the corresponding 1,5-anhydroglycitols661 represents an improvement over the reductive desulfurization process and will doubtless make this class of compound even more readily available in the future. 

A second major event in the saga of polymer conductors was the discovery that the doping processes of polyacetylene could be promoted and driven electrochemically in a reversible fashion by polarising the polymer film electrode in a suitable electrochemical cell (MacDiarmid and Maxfield, 1987). Typically, a three-electrode cell, containing the (CH) film as the working electrode, a suitable electrolyte (e.g. a non-aqueous solution of lithium perchlorate in propylene carbonate, here abbreviated to LiC104-PC) and suitable counter (e.g. lithium metal) and reference (e.g. again Li) electrodes, can be used. 

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