Paneth’s mirrors and the isolation of methyl radicals

Friedrich Adolf Paneth

Source: © Tita Binz/ullstein bild/Getty Images

Laying the groundwork for the study of combustion and photochemical reactions

For chemists, the word radical has changed in strange ways. Derived from the latin radix, root, the word referred originally to stable groupings of atoms that stayed together during chemical reactions. The R groups of today are direct descendants of the radicals of yesteryear, when organic chemists built homologous series and identified compounds by disconnection and functional group transformation.