Grubbs, Robert Howard,
1942–2021, American chemist, b. near Possum Trot, Ky., Univ. of
Florida (B.S., 1963; M.S., 1965), Columbia, Univ. (Ph.D, 1968). Grubbs was
on the faculty at Michigan State Univ. from 1969-78 before becoming a
professor at the California Institute of Technology, where he worked until
his death. He won the 2005 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Richard Schrock and Yves Chauvin for development of the
metathesis method in organic synthesis; metathesis is used in the
development of pharmaceuticals and advanced polymeric materials. In
metathesis reactions, double bonds between carbon atoms in molecules of
different compounds are broken, splitting the molecules into atom groups;
molecules of new compounds are formed when each group from one molecule
forms a double bond with one of the groups from a different molecule. Two
years after Schrock produced (1990) an efficient metal-compound catalyst for
metathesis, Grubbs developed an improved catalyst that was stable in air.
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