Speaker
Description
Since the discovery and early developments of radiochemistry by P. and M. Curie at the beginning of the XXth century, the chemistry of radioactive nuclides has undergone spectacular progresses during the first half of the century. Since then the term radiochemistry broadly covers the chemistry at tracer scale from early Curie’s methodologies1 and the chemistry of radionuclides. The IUPAC gold book quotes “radiochemistry, that part of chemistry which deals with radioactive materials. It includes the production of radionuclides and their compounds by processing irradiated materials or naturally occurring radioactive materials, the application of chemical techniques to nuclear studies, and the application of radioactivity to the investigation of chemical, biochemical or biomedical problems.”2
After the discovery of Pu in 19403, the concept of actinide series was proposed by G. T. Seaborg.4 According to Seaborg’s early views, the radioelements starting at Ac (to Lr) belong to the so called actinide series (also called 5-f series), which himself belongs to a subgroup of the transition metal series.5 Very soon, chemists started to develop the coordination chemistry of the actinide elements and compared it to that of transition metals. But from the IUPAC definition, fundamental coordination chemistry of the actinide elements does not obviously fall into the definition of radiochemistry.
From an epistemological point of view, should radiochemistry be considered as part of the transition metal coordination chemistry? Or from historical reasons, should radiochemistry have a rather more restrictive definition? What are the connections and disconnections between radiochemistry and coordination chemistry?
