THE QUEST FOR STABLE CARBENES

This article follows a thread through the history of the quest for sta ble carbenes. The story begins in 1835 with the attempts by Dumas to d ehydrate methanol to produce methylene. It continues through modern ti mes to a point where the accumulation of many false starts in stable c arbene synthesis led to the conventional wisdom that carbenes are so h ighly reactive that they exist only as labile, short-lived molecules. The report of the isolation of the first stable crystalline carbene in 1991 began a renaissance in the chemistry of isolable carbenes. Much of the older chemistry is currently being revisited and reinterpreted with the aid of modern analytical techniques. Easily handled carbenes are opening many new opportunities in both exploratory chemistry and i ndustrial applications.