Neil Bartlett | Biography

Neil Bartlett has been called "the foremost fluorine chemist in the world" by a colleague, as reported in Chemical and Engineering News. In 1962 he used his skill with that highly active reagent to produce the first-ever compound of a noble gas. Bartlett's success forced a reexamination of basic valence theory, which proposes that the number of free electrons in an atom is the prime factor in determining that atom's bonding behavior.

Bartlett was born September 15, 1932, in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England, the middle sibling in a family of three children. His father, Norman Bartlett, was a shipwright, a trade plied by the Bartletts for over a century. His mother was Anne Vock Bartlett. After attending Heaton Grammar School from 1944 to 1951, Bartlett entered King's College of the University of Durham, where he received his bachelor of science degree in 1954 and his doctorate in 1958. In 1957 he married Christina Isabel Cross. They have four children: Jeremy, Jane, Christopher, and Robin.

Following graduation, Bartlett taught at the Duke's School, then emigrated to Canada when he was appointed a lecturer in chemistry at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver in 1958. By 1964 he had worked his way up to full professor of chemistry. In 1966 Bartlett was named professor of chemistry at Princeton University; simultaneously, he became a member of the research staff at Bell Telephone Laboratories. In 1969 he joined the faculty of the University of California at Berkeley as a professor of chemistry and faculty senior scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory.

While at the University of British Columbia, Bartlett began studying the factors that limit the combining capacity, or oxidation states, of various elements. He concentrated on the noble metals, such as gold and platinum, because they offered a range of oxidation states. He was particularly interested in the relationship of the geometry of the molecules to their valence, or outer shell electron configurations.

As part of this work, Bartlett was using fluorines, the most powerful oxidizing agents (electron acceptors) of the known elements, and reacting them with the noble metals. Treating platinum or platinum compounds with fluorine, Bartlett produced a highly reactive red solid, which was thought to be platinum oxyfluoride. After devising special techniques to study the solid, Bartlett and D. H. Lohmann determined that it was a actually a salt, dioxygenyl hexafluoroplatinate, and the first compound to contain both positively and negatively charged ions. This discovery paved the way for what Chemical and Engineering News called "one of the most important developments in inorganic chemistry in modern times": Bartlett's creation of a compound of a noble gas.

Since the discovery of argon and helium in 1894 by Sir William Ramsay and Lord John Rayleigh, the noble gases--which also included neon, krypton, and xenon--had proved remarkably inert. Valence theory offered an explanation. Atoms are brought together by the electrons orbiting their nuclei. These orbits, or shells, can hold only a certain number of electrons. For example, oxygen's outermost shell can hold eight electrons, but the atom itself has only six in the outer shell.Oxygen atoms seek to fill their outer ring by joining with atoms that can provide two electrons.Hydrogen atoms have only one electron each, so two hydrogen atoms are a perfect complement to an oxygen atom.

The outer shell of electrons in a noble gas atom, however, is already full. Helium, for instance, has two electrons--its maximum--orbiting its nucleus; the other noble gases have eight. Because the outer shell is complete, a noble gas atom does not need to share electrons with any other atoms. Thus, valence theory reasoned, the noble gases are completely inert. In 1933 Linus Pauling surmised that xenon, the heaviest stable noble gas, might react with a very active compound, perhaps a fluorine. A number of experiments to create a compound with xenon failed. Attempts continued for years without success.

But in 1962 Bartlett succeeded, using platinum hexafluoride to oxidize (remove electrons from) xenon. Since his discovery, scientists have become aware of the limitations of simple valence theory. Noble gas compounds have been the subject of a new field of study, and other researchers, building on Bartlett's work, have prepared new compounds of xenon and two other noble gases, radon and krypton. While he is best known for his work with noble gases, Bartlett's other research includes preparing new synthetic metals from graphite or graphite-like boron nitride; synthesizing salts containing perfluoroaromatic cations; preparing new binary fluorides, and discovering, with B. Zemva and his co-workers, a new method of synthesizing thermodynamically unstable high oxidation state fluorides.

The author of more than one hundred scientific papers, Bartlett has received numerous accolades from his peers in recognition of his work. Besides honorary degrees from universities in the United States, Canada, and Europe, he was awarded the Corday-Morgan Medal and Prize of the Chemical Society, London. In 1965 he received both the Research Corporation Prize and the Steacie Prize in Natural Sciences (with John C. Polanyi ). Bartlett received the Dannie-Heineman Prize from Göttingen Academy in Germany in 1971, and in 1976, the Robert A. Welch Award. In 1988 he received the Prix Moissan (with George Cady) in Paris, and in 1992 was recognized with the Bonner Chemiepreis from Friedrich-Wilhelms University of Bonn, Germany.