FOREWORD / AVANT-PROPOS

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This issue of the Canadian Journal of Chemistry commemorates the 40th anniversary of a landmark Canadian discovery by A.D. Allen and C.V. Senoff at the University of Toronto in the mid-60s. In 1965, a paper appeared in Chemical Communications, entitled “Nitrogenopentaammineruthenium(II) Complexes” that detailed the serendipitous formation of the [Ru(NH3)5N2] 2+ complex cation, the first dinitrogen complex, from the reaction of RuCl3 with hydrazine hydrate. Instead of ending up as a curiosity and relegated to secondary literature reviews of esoteric inorganic complexes, this report sparked an intense effort in the coordination chemistry and reactivity of molecular nitrogen that continues to this day. Research into nitrogen fixation is a topic with great historical perspective and continues even today on three fronts. The first front stems from the early work by Haber on ammonia synthesis, and is concerned with efforts to further improve the efficiency of the heterogeneous reaction of N2 and H2 over activated metal surfaces to produce NH3. Another active front involves understanding the biological fixation of nitrogen by certain enzymes. The third front involves homogeneous activation and functionalization of molecular nitrogen by metal complexes, an area that overlaps with the previous two fronts from a modeling point of view, but also is concerned with expanding the known reactivity patterns of the simple N2 molecule. In this issue, an international slate of authors who are active in the area of dinitrogen chemical research were contacted to submit an article, either original or a minireview of their work. Authors from Japan, Germany, the United States, and Canada have submitted 13 articles that provide retrospective and updates of current research in this important area. It is interesting that four of the principal authors were not even born in 1965, a testament to the importance of this long-standing problem in chemistry. A number of the other authors clearly indicate how important this complex was to this area of research. In the following pages, the original article from 1965 is reproduced (by permission of The Royal Society of Chemistry). In addition, a brief historical perspective is given by G.J. Leigh on A.D. (Bert) Allen and this discovery. The goal of this commemorative issue is to provide a forum for recent work in dinitrogen coordination chemistry and celebrate an important Canadian milestone. I want to personally thank all of the contributors for their enthusiasm and support of this project.