In honor of Prof. Michael T. Pope for over half a century of excellent contributions to polyoxometalate chemistryThe versatility of chemistry based on tetravalent carbon is unparalleled. Small organic molecules are readily modifiable by traditional serial syntheses and/or combinatorial libraries, and systematically linked together by Nature; in the laboratory, polymeric structures ranging from biological macromolecules to functional solid-state materials can be generated. Meanwhile, molecular or oligomeric building blocks can be designed to self-assemble into supramolecular structures, including increasingly sophisticated "nano-reactors" [1,2] that link molecular to nano-scale worlds. When combined with metal cations, organic linkers can generate (now predictable) metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) with large and controllable pore sizes. [3] On the other hand in 1991, Pope and Müller noted in a review that metal oxide cluster anions (polyoxometalates, or POMs) "form a class of inorganic compounds that is unmatched in terms of molecular and electronic structural versatility, reactivity, and relevance to analytical chemistry, catalysis, biology, medicine, geochemistry, materials science, and topology."