Mechanisms of Hydrocarbon Reactions [antikvár]

Opening address by P.Tétényi It is a great honour and a great pleasure to me to greet you on behalf of the organizing bodies of our Symposium, namely the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Isotopes and the Society of Hungarian Chemists. I am very pleased that you have accepted the invitation to attend our scientific meeting in such a great number. The investigation of the chemistry and transformation of hydrocarbons has an increasing importance in chemical research. The development and improvement of the experimental methods give more and more possibilities for a thorough study of hydrocarbons which do not possess characteristic functional group in their molecules, enabling us to increase our knowledge about their behaviour under different experimental conditions. The chemical transformations of hydrocarbons play an important role in chemical industries, too. They are important not only as energy resources but as starting materials for chemical industries all over the world. This latter role is increasing also due to the appearance of new energy sources giving, thus, more possibilities to use hydrocarbons for other chemical purposes. Consequently, more attention will be focused by different research institutions and groups on the chemical transformation of hydrocarbons. This was our impression at the Fifth Congress of Catalysis in Palm Beach last year, when about 4-0% of the lectures dealt with catalytic transformation of different hydrocarbons. Advanced research works which are in progress for example at the Universities of Moscow, Princeton, Stanford and Berkeley, in the Zelinskii Institute of Organic Chemistry of the Soviet Academy of Sciences as well as in the Institute of Catalytic Research in Lyon all show that catalytic research and hydrocarbon chemistry have merged to a great extent. In addition, present radiation sources of very high intensity and improved analytical methods are available and this is the reason why radiation research also turns more and more towards the study of hydrocarbon reactions. 11