Dr. King has won several awards and honors, including Fellow of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, American Chemical Society Award in Pure Chemistry, Nato Senior Fellowship, and American Chemical Society Award in Inorganic Chemistry.

His book provides a summary of the most important aspects of the descriptive inorganic chemistry of the main group elements, namely all of the elements except for the d-block transition metals.

Organized by element, making it easy to assimilate the important aspects of the chemistry of a particular element, many structural diagrams and chemical equations are given to illustrate structures and chemical reactions making this the first source of general information research workers will turn to.

Many chapters include the following: a summary of the typical coordination number, oxidation states, bonding types, etc. found in the elements covered; important properties of the free elements including a discussion of allotropic forms; discussions of halides, oxides, oxyacids, organimetallic derivatives, and other compound types in separate sections.

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