1. Department of Chemistry Seminar Announcement Date/Time/VenueTitle/Speaker 24 Feb (Thu) 11am – 12nn @ S8 Level 3 Executive Classroom The Odd Bit of Carbon: Mono and Tricarbido Linked Bimetallics Professor Anthony F Hill Australian National University Host : Asst Prof Ang Wee Han About the Speaker All are Welcome Abstract The field of bimetallic compounds in which the metals are spanned by a linear chain of carbon has grown enormously in recent years. However the vast majority of such compounds have two features in common: (i) The carbon chains are connected to the metals by single metal-carbon bonds; (ii) The chains involve an even number of carbon atoms. This may be traced to the synthetic methodologies which are generally derived from the mature field of organic alkyne, diyne and polyne synthesis. Effectively, these strategies deliver carbon in 'packets of two'. Compounds with metals linked by an odd number of carbon atoms are rare because (i) they are synthetically more difficult to obtain and (ii) simple electron counting requires that at least one metal carbon linkage involves metal-carbon multiple bonding. This talk will present synthetic strategies for the synthesis of bimetallic complexes spanned by one or three carbon atoms and a comparison of their chemistries with those of even-carbon chains. Professor Anthony F. Hill graduated from the University of Auckland with a MSc (Hons) and received his DrRerNat from the Universit ä t Bayreuth. He has since held positions at the University of Bristol (1986-1988), the University of Warwick (1988- 1991) and Imperial College (1992-2000) before being appointed Professor at the Research School of Chemistry of Australian National University. Professor Hill is a renowned organometallic chemist who has published widely in his field. He is the current Head of Inorganic Chemistry at the premier research institution in Australia (ANU). He is the author of a textbook on the subject of the organometallic chemistry of the transition metals and since 1995, has been an editor of Advances in Organometallic Chemistry, an important review journal in organometallic chemistry, and sits on the editorial board of Organometallics (ACS) and Dalton Transactions (RSC).

2. Department of Chemistry Graduate Seminar Announcement Date/Time/VenueTitle/Speaker 25 Feb (Fri) 11am – 12nn @ S8 Level 3 Executive Classroom Metallaboratranes: Metal-Element Dative Bonding and Masked Metal Bases Professor Anthony F Hill Australian National University Host : Asst Prof Ang Wee Han About the Speaker All are Welcome Abstract Professor Anthony F. Hill graduated from the University of Auckland with a MSc (Hons) and received his DrRerNat from the Universit ä t Bayreuth. He has since held positions at the University of Bristol (1986-1988), the University of Warwick (1988- 1991) and Imperial College (1992-2000) before being appointed Professor at the Research School of Chemistry of Australian National University. Professor Hill is a renowned organometallic chemist who has published widely in his field. He is the current Head of Inorganic Chemistry at the premier research institution in Australia (ANU). He is the author of a textbook on the subject of the organometallic chemistry of the transition metals and since 1995, has been an editor of Advances in Organometallic Chemistry, an important review journal in organometallic chemistry, and sits on the editorial board of Organometallics (ACS) and Dalton Transactions (RSC). The classical view of transition metal coordination chemistry involves the metal acting as a Lewis acid to a collection of electron-pair donor ligands. However, for sufficiently electron rich metal centres with high d-occupancies, the possibility of the metal centre acting as a Lewis base arises. For the simples p-black element boron - the text-book Lewis acid, such a situation was first envisaged in the 1960s but only demonstrated unequivocally with the isolation of the first metallaboratranes - compounds that feature a trans-annular dative metalboron bond housed within a cage structure. These compounds were first obtained adventitiously, however in the interim a wealth of systematic chemistry has emerged such that they are now represented for all the metals of groups 8-11.