This book is intended for use by middle to final year chemistry students in undergraduate courses in organometallic chemistry. It is based on the book written in Japanese named “” (Yuki-kinzoku kagaku = Organometallic Chemistry), one of a series of works on coordination chemistry organized by the Japan Society of Coordination Chemistry. The Japanese language version of the book has been used as a textbook of organometallic chemistry in Japan since 2010 and has a good reputation. It has now been decided that the Royal Society of Chemistry will publish several books from this series in English, and this book is the first in the series.

The book consists of two sections; Section 1: Basics and Section 2: Advanced. The former covers fundamental aspects of organometallic chemistry, preparing readers for understanding the more advanced topics in the latter. Readers will thus grasp both the basics and the cutting edge of the field. In the basic part, the fundamental reaction patterns concerning bonds between transition metals and carbon atoms are described, including also how these are combined to establish effective catalytic cycles. To understand the basics and make use of the knowledge, it is most effective to solve problems, so the book contains a number of practice questions and gives appropriate answers to deepen the reader's understanding. In the advanced part, the chemistry concerning bonding between transition metals and main group elements other than C, such as M–Si, M–N, M–P, M–O and M–S covalent bonds is described and the origin of the differences to the M–C case is discussed. Since there are few textbooks that systematically describe the bonding between transition metals and main group elements other than C, this book is both unique and useful in this respect.

Chapters 1 to 7 of Section 1 and Chapter 13 (solutions to problems) were prepared by H. Nakazawa. In Section 2, the contributors were Chapter 8: M. Okazaki, Chapter 9: Y. Kawano and K. Ueno, Chapter 10: H. Matsuzaka and T. Mizuta, and Chapters 11 and 12: K. Osakada. H. Nakazawa edited the book and Julian Koe edited the work with regard to the English. The authors would like to thank the many people who have contributed to the preparation of the book.

Hiroshi Nakazawa

Osaka, Japan