Research on the Chemical Modelling of Biological Nitrogen Fixation in the New China—An Overview of Research Carried out at the Fujian Institute During the 1970s and the Early 1980s

Abstract

In the New China, the summer of 1971 witnessed the gradual resumption of more-or-less peaceful working conditions after the first destructive phase of the catastrophic Cultural Revolution. Professor Guo Xingxian, then the deputy director of the Provisional Bureau of Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), began to recognize the academic significance of chemical modelling of biological nitrogen fixation, which was then attracting the attention of a great number of chemists and biochemists. He therefore proposed to organize a mini-conference consisting of a number of professors and research scientists for a preliminary evaluation of the feasibility of drawing up a research program in this connection. This received at once very warm response from chemists working in the field of the chemistry of transition-metal clusters and looking forward to their possible applications to catalysis problems. As a matter of fact, it is already very much well-known that strongly acidified cuprous compounds play an important role in the catalytic dimerization of acetylene to vinyl acetylene. Again, several research groups in the New China were then already engaged, with certain degrees of success, in research projects organized for the catalytic cyclic trimerization of acetylene to benzene with supported chromic oxide catalysts, and even the catalytic “tetramerization” of acetylene to styrene (via the oligomerization of vinyl acetylene with two molecules of acetylene) with similar chromium catalysts. (Perhaps it is worth pointing out that China was then rather deficient in hydrocarbon resources!) There had been sufficient reasons to speculate that these cyclic trimerizations took place through the catalytic effect of trinuclear chromium clusters. Meanwhile, the molybdenum iron protein (the so-called MoFe-pr), known to be responsible for the very efficient dinitrogen fixation of the enzyme nitrogenase, has been found to contain the transition metals molybdenum and iron. The enthusiastic response of the Fujian Institute of Research on the Structure of Matter, CAS (Fuzhou, Fujian), actively involved in research on the structural chemistry of transition-metal clusters, as well as the Department of Chemistry, Xiamen (Amoy) University (Xiamen, Fujian), well-known for its catalytic research under the capable leadership of Professor K.R. Tsai (Cai Qirui), is therefore quite understandable. Also, the Department of Chemistry, Jilin (Kirin) University (Changchun, Jilin), again well-known for its research work in quantum chemistry under the eminent leadership of Professor A.C. Tang (Tang Aoqing) has also been very much interested in this joint research project. However, without the hearty collaboration of chemists and biochemists in other Chinese research institutions, such an interdisciplinary research program would be doomed to failure.