F. Albert Cotton

Frank Albert Cotton, known professionally as F. Albert Cotton (April 9, 1930 to February 20, 2007), was an American inorganic chemist born in Philadelphia, who died in College Station, Texas. In 1964 he identified a quadruple bond between two rhenium atoms, the first recognized example of a bond order higher than three between two metal atoms, and he went on to characterize many further examples of multiple metal-to-metal bonding. Cotton spent much of his career at Texas A&M University, authored more than sixteen hundred scientific papers and the widely used textbook Advanced Inorganic Chemistry, and received both the National Medal of Science and the Wolf Prize in Chemistry.