Henry Taube received the 1983 Nobel Prize in Chemistry “for his work on the mechanisms of electron transfer reactions, especially in metal complexes.\”[1] I first came to know about him during my undergraduate course “Transition Metals and Coordination Chemistry” when my professor recommended this book as one of our textbooks and mentioned that this great scientist received the Nobel Prize for his groundbreaking discoveries about the nature of electron transfers in ion oxidation. Born on November 30, 1915, in Neudorf, Saskatchewan, Canada, Henry Taube completed his undergraduate and master’s degree in Science from the University of Saskatchewan and earned his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley. In 1941, he joined the faculty of Cornell University as an Assistant Professor and in 1946, he moved to the University of Chicago, rising to full professor in 1952. In 1962, he joined the faculty of Stanford University, and later became the Marguerite Blake Wilbur Professor of Chemistry in 1976. Taube\’s initial research at Cornell University was focused on redox reactions using isotopically labeled oxygen-18 and radioactive chlorine. However, during his tenure at the University of Chicago, he was developing a course on advanced inorganic chemistry and realized that his work could be related to inorganic complexes. In 1952, Taube published a research article titled “Rates and Mechanisms of Substitution in Inorganic Complexes in Solution” where he recognized the correlation between the rate of ligand substitution and d-electron configuration of metal identifying the intermediate step and explained why reactions between similar metals and ions occurred at different rates. [2] The significant discovery of his research was the way molecules build a type of \”chemical bridge\” rather than simply exchanging electrons, as was thought before. He explained the correlation between electron configuration and ligand substitution with the help of valence bond theory and ligand field theory. According to the Taube, the most challenging part of his Nobel winning research was finding the graduate students willing to work on electron transfer reactions since students preferred to work on more interesting projects in his laboratory focusing on the effects of isotopic tracers and kinetics. His work has been fundamental to many different fields such as electron transfer at semiconductor electrodes, solar energy conversion, and photosynthesis. His contribution in chemistry includes the determination of solvation numbers, elucidation of substitution mechanisms, discovery of inner-sphere electron transfer, and discovery of the remarkable coordination chemistry of ruthenium and osmium ammine complexes with unsaturated ligands and mixed-valence complexes and their fundamental relationship to intramolecular electron transfer. He is the namesake of the Creutz-Taube complex, with the formula [Ru(NH3)5]2(C4H4N2).[3] In 1986, he became an emeritus professor, but he continued to carry out active experimental studies at Stanford University until 2001, publishing over 600 publications including one book, and had mentored over 200 students during his career. His famous quote about kinetics, “The goal for those of us interested in descriptive chemistry is not kinetics as an end in itself, but is rather to understand reactivity, it (kinetics) being essential to developing the subject of reactivity as a science.” Taube received the Priestly Medal, the highest honor of the American Chemical Society in 1985. He was also awarded The National Medal of Science (1977), the Robert A. Welch Award in Chemistry (1983) and the National Academy of Sciences Award in Chemical Sciences (1983).[4] Henry Taube took his final breath in his home in Palo Alto, California on November 16, 2005, just 2 weeks short of his 90th birthday. His earlier research published in Chemical Reviews in 1952, is 66 years old now but the correlation he described between the rate of ligand substitution and electronic configuration for transition metal coordination complexes is still the predominant theory in this field.
References:
(1) Press Release: The 1983 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/1983/press-release/
(2) Taube, H. Chem. Rev. 1952, 50, 69-126.
(3) Creutz, C; Taube, H. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 1969, 91, 3988–3989.
(4) \”Memorial Resolution: Henry Taube\” (PDF). Stanford University Senate. http://facultysenate.stanford.edu/memorial_resolutions/Taube_Henry_SenD5801.pdf