Historical Introduction

This chapter summarizes the history of iodine chemistry. Iodine was originally isolated and recognized as a new element in 1813, and numerous inorganic and organic compounds of iodine were reported in the nineteenth century. In the twentieth century, the interest in iodine chemistry has surged owing to the very useful oxidizing properties of hypervalent iodine reagents, combined with their benign environmental character and commercial availability. At that time, many similarities between transition metal chemistry and hypervalent iodine chemistry have been recognized and utilized in organic synthesis. A new era in iodine chemistry has started in 2005 with the discovery of reactions catalyzed by hypervalent iodine species. The recent development of highly efficient and enantioselective catalytic systems based on iodine redox chemistry has added a new dimension to the field of iodine chemistry and initiated a major surge of research activity, which is expected to continue in the future.