Geoffrey Wilkinson is best known for establishing the structure of a "sandwich molecule" he called ferrocene. In sandwich compounds a metal atom is the "filling" between two "slices" which are flat, typically carbon-based, rings. Since Wilkinson's original discovery of an iron filling between two cyclopentadienyl (five carbon atoms linked in a circle) slices, many different sandwiches have been built. Various metal fillings have been used, as have numerous other slices. Sandwich compounds have found widespread use as catalysts in industrial processes, and their previously unknown chemical bonding structure has proven to be of great theoretical interest to various branches of chemistry. Wilkinson's discovery revolutionized how chemists thought about chemical structure and opened up new avenues of chemical exploration.

Wilkinson was born on July 14, 1921, in Yorkshire, England, to Henry and Ruth Crowther Wilkinson. It was an uncle, the owner of a small chemical company in the town of Todmorden...