Henry Taube: inorganic chemist extraordinaire.

The numerous innovative contributions of Henry Taube to modern inorganic chemistry are briefly reviewed. Highlights include the determination of solvation numbers and lability, elucidation of substitution mechanisms, discovery and documentation of inner-sphere electron transfer, and discovery of the remarkable coordination chemistry of ruthenium and osmium ammine complexes with unsaturated ligands and mixed-valence complexes and their fundamental relationship to intramolecular electron transfer.