Ferrocene reacts readily with butyl lithium to give 1,1'-dilithioferrocene, which in turn is a versatile nucleophile.
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In 1973 Fischer of the Technische Universität München and Wilkinson of Imperial College London shared a Nobel Prize for their work on metallocenes and other aspects of organometallic chemistry.
After the discovery of ferrocene in 1951, Todd Reynolds and Geoffrey Wilkinson in 1956 synthesized the uranium metallocene Cp3UCl from sodium cyclopentadienide and uranium tetrachloride as a stable but extremely air-sensitive compound.
Ruthenocene was first synthesized in 1952 by Geoffrey Wilkinson, a Nobel laureate who had collaborated in assigning the structure of ferrocene only a year earlier.