Prof Peter Ludwig Israel Pauson FRSE FRIC (1925–2013) was a German–Jewish emigrant who settled in Britain and who is remembered for his contributions to chemistry, most notably the Pauson–Khand reaction[1] and as joint discoverer of ferrocene.
[2] He was born in Bamberg, Germany on 30 July 1925, the son of Stefan Pauson and his wife, Helene Dorothea Herzfelder.
After graduating in 1946, he moved to Sheffield University as a postgraduate, studying under Robert Downs Haworth and receiving his doctorate in 1949.
His discovery of ferrocene with his student, Thomas J. Kealy, arose from an attempt to dimerize cyclopentadienylmagnesium bromide using Iron(III) chloride; the orange-yellow solid with formula C10H10Fe was described as a "molecular sandwich" in Pauson's note which was published in Nature in 1951.
[5] He married Lai-Ngau Mary (née Wong) (1928 – March 18, 2010),[9] having met her at a party hosted by Enrico Fermi when Pauson was at the University of Chicago in the early 1950s.