Noble gas chemistry began with Neil Bartlett’s 1962 report, but there had been earlier unsuccessful attempts, including one study instigated by Linus Pauling and carried out in 1933 by Caltech professor Don Yost (along with his graduate student Albert Kaye), aimed at inducing xenon to react with fluorine.  After 1962 a number of commentators, including Bartlett himself, proposed a variety of reasons for Yost’s failure; but as I will show, none of those stands up to detailed examination.  I will offer a plausible alternative explanation, based upon a hitherto-unnoticed detail of Yost’s experimental design, that strongly suggests he could easily have succeeded with just a little more effort and/or luck.<br/>

Near-miss synthesis of a noble gas compound in 1933: Could it have been Harry Gray award-worthy?

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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