Hypercoordinate carbon in polyhedral organic structures

Carbon holds a unique position among the elements. It forms more than 14 millions of currently known organic compounds, structural organization of which is governed by the beautifully simple principles of tetravalence and tetrahedral stereochemical configuration. In the past decades, the edifice of the classical structural theory of organic compounds has been complemented with new approaches allowing a rational design of polyhedral clusters with hypercoordinate carbon centres.