From their discovery in the last decade of the nineteenth century on, the nitrile oxides comprised a rather small group of little-known and little-investigated unstable organic derivatives of hydroxylamine. Around 1950, the astonishingly wide variety of their reactions started to become gradually unveiled. This reactivity has made them increasingly important as valuable tools for many syntheses. Simultaneously, the newly dis- covered transformations raised interesting theoretical questions and their pursuit has generally enriched our understanding of reaction mechanisms of organic chemistry....
From their discovery in the last decade of the nineteenth century on, the nitrile oxides comprised a rather small group of little-known and little-inv...