Catalysis by gold

The recent interest in gold catalysis provides the focus for this perspectives paper. Until recently gold has been overlooked as a key component of both homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysts. Two observations in the 1980s showed that gold could be a catalyst of choice, but it is only relatively recently that gold has been shown to be a very versatile redox catalyst. In this paper aspects of both the background to this interest and some of the recent work on gold will be discussed.