Paternò–Büchi reaction

A few years before his retirement, Sicilian chemist Emanuele Paternò wrote his final editorial preface for Gazzetta Chimica Italiana, the journal he had founded 50 years earlier. Recalling the circumstances under which he had entertained the idea of an Italian journal as a young man, Paternò lamented that Italy had lagged behind the achievements of Germany and the UK in the 19^th century, where there were great laboratories led by eminent men. He listed them all, with admiration and with words of resolve to redress the balance.¹