🚀 go-pugleaf

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In article <NS14.93Jan9190020@crux3.crux2.cit.cornell.edu> ns14@crux3.crux2.cit.cornell.edu (Nathan Otto Siemers) writes:
> How about the tetrahedral nature of the carbon atom?  The idea
> and subsequent notions of stereochemistry were first posited by 
> Van Hoft and Lebel  (sp?).   Wohler,  widely considered to be 
> the "father" of organic chemistry,  denounced them as mystics 
> quite publicly.

Let me beg some more details, especially related to the issue at
hand.  How (and how long) did Wohler's opposition retard the
discovery of evidence related to stereochemistry?  How effective
was it at retarding the acceptance of these ideas? 

> Slightly more specialized is the decades long argument about
> hypervalent carbon,  fought to the death, literally, by 
> H.C. Brown and the late Saul Winstein.  Winstein happened to
> be correct, but it wasn't conclusively demonstrated until 
> after his death. ...

Why was it not conclusively demonstrated until after Winstein's
death?  How did Brown's opposition delay this? 

Russell