Some years ago, I agreed to contribute a volume to the Academic Press
'Organo- metallic Chemistry' series - the metals to be covered were
rhodium and iridium. Initially, my plan was to discuss both the
fundamental organometallic chemistry and applications in organic
synthesis. When the first draft of the manuscript was complete, it was
apparent that I had exceeded my allowance of pages by a huge amount. It
was then that I decided that the catalysis section warranted separate
treatment. I am grateful to Reidel for agreeing to publish this volume
on Homogeneous Catalysis with Compounds of Rhodium and Iridium as part
of their 'Catalysis by Metal Complexes' series. The material I had for
the original Academic Press project covered the litera- ture to the end
of 1978. I decided to update this to the end of 1982 with a few key
references from 1983. It is some measure of the rate of progress in this
field that the number of references almost doubled during this revision.