When presented with a new compound or material, the inorganic chemist will usually have several questions in mind about its composition and structure. Although a simple elemental analysis may answer many questions about its composition, the chemist will still have questions about its structure, and, ifthe material contains a metal atom, he will often want to know its oxidation state, coordination number and geometry. Further, at an increasingly frequent rate, the chemist may need details of the spin- state, magnetic and perhaps dynamic properties of the material. If the investigator is...

Stability constants are fundamental to understanding the behavior of metal ions in aqueous solution. Such understanding is important in a wide variety of areas, such as metal ions in biology, biomedical applications, metal ions in the environment, extraction metallurgy, food chemistry, and metal ions in many industrial processes. In spite of this importance, it appears that many inorganic chemists have lost an appreciation for the importance of stability constants, and the thermodynamic aspects of complex formation, with attention focused over the last thirty years on newer areas, such as...

In 1988 the Mossbauer effect community completed 30 years of continual contribution to the fields of nuclear physics, solid state science, and a variety of related disciplines. To celebrate this anniversary, Professor Gonser of the Universitat des Saarlandes has contributed a chapter to this volume on the history of the effect. Although Mossbauer spectroscopy has reached its mature years, the chapters in this volume illustrate that it is still a dynamic field of science with applications to topics ranging from permanent magnets to biologi- cal mineralization. During the discussion of a...