This one-day meeting surveys the historical background to the remarkable development of organometallic chemistry to its modern form as a discipline linking inorganic, organic and catalytic chemistry. The first organometallic compounds were made in the mid-19th century by Sir Edward Frankland, the subject of a Wheeler Bequest lecture by Professor Colin Russell which will also be published as an Occasional Paper. The other five talks are also by eminent experts in the field and cover main-group organometallic compounds, metal carbonyl, metal olefin and sandwich complexes, and a final lecture surveys current and potential future developments in the area. The lectures will attempt to highlight the crucial, often accidental, discoveries that spurred advances in the field, together with the scientists who made those discoveries. The challenges to valence theory on the one hand and the close links with industrial processes and organic synthesis and catalysis on the other will be emphasised.