[Life and death of free radicals].

In 1900, the term as used for the first time by Moses Gomberg, a chemist working in Michigan University. He discovered the triphenylmethyl radical when he treated triphenylmethyl chloride by metals (Ag, Zn). The term "free radicals" has been used for 93 years to distinguish between radicals as distinct chemical species and the term radical used to describe a substitutive group. In 1993, JUPAC decided to call , "radicals" chemical species bearing an unpaired electron and "groups" the substituting groups.