Hydrogenation has played a crucial role in energy related applications ranging from the production of ammonia from N2 to the conversion of coal to liquid fuels. Until recently, metals have been used exclusively to activate hydrogen. Sabatier won the Nobel Prize in 1912 for his efforts to understand the catalytic hydrogenation of olefins using reducing nickel; in the 1960s, organometallic chemistry gave rise to homogeneous transition-metal-based hydrogenation catalysts. Recent reports of ¿activation¿ of molecular hydrogen under mild conditions in strained molecular complexes, e.g., the Ge2- alkyne complexes and the ¿frustrated¿ Lewis acid-base pairs reported by Stephan (eq 1) have demonstrated that transition metals are not required to activate hydrogen. ,