Ludwig Mond FRS was a German-born British chemist and industrialist. He discovered an important, previously unknown, class of compounds called metal carbonyls.
Portrait of Ludwig Mond by Solomon Joseph Solomon, circa 1909
Ludwig Mond (right) as a member of the Corps Rhenania Heidelberg, ca. 1856
Metal carbonyls are coordination complexes of transition metals with carbon monoxide ligands. Metal carbonyls are useful in organic synthesis and as catalysts or catalyst precursors in homogeneous catalysis, such as hydroformylation and Reppe chemistry. In the Mond process, nickel tetracarbonyl is used to produce pure nickel. In organometallic chemistry, metal carbonyls serve as precursors for the preparation of other organometallic complexes.
Sample of iron pentacarbonyl, an air-stable liquid.
Spheres of nickel manufactured by the Mond process
Justus von Liebig (1860)
Ludwig Mond, circa 1909