Neil Bartlett's superpowerful oxidants NiF6- and AgF4- and the preparation of RhF6.

[eppur_se_muova]

1. Neil Bartlett got 20 nominations for a Nobel Prize. Never awarded.

https://www.nobelprize.org/nomination/archive/show_people.php?id=13013

I remember when I was only 8-10 years old and learned for the first time (several years after the discovery -- I wasn't really keeping up with the literature )that noble gas compounds had been discovered for the first time. That was perhaps my first real awareness that chemistry wasn't just a bunch of facts you could look up in books, but a still-growing science, with much left to discover. Although I eventually became an organic chemist -- somewhat to my surprise -- I always maintained a minor interest in the chemistry of noble gases and fluorination (applied for a job at Daikin, didn't get it). I remember reading a paper in grad school in which Bartlett used XeF4 as a solvent to prepare salts of AuF6- -- I believe (FXeFXeF)AuF6 -- which decomposed to AuF5 on warming. Bartlett was aiming for AuF6 (neutral) but seemed to have convinced himself that it wasn't possible as a result of that research. Worth remembering that it was his study of PtF6 which originally led to the discovery of xenon compounds, using textbook chemical logic and a little accidental contamination by O2. (Tried to track down a quote, supposedly due to Fermi, that "Sometimes the hardest part of making a discovery is recognizing that you have made a discovery." Couldn't locate it. Probably in a GAUSSIAN printout somewhere.)

I can't help but wonder how many other future chemists were influenced by that discovery and might not have become chemists otherwise. Seems at least an honorary Nobel is in order for that alone.

(Looks like we lost sub and sup after the hack. No more neat chemical formulas now. C'est la vie.)


ETA: Oops, just noticed that should be AgF4- in the title. Ag(V) still awaits discovery.