Robert H. Grubbs, 79, Dies; Chemistry Breakthru Led to a Nobel
By Dylan Loeb McClain, 12/24/21, New York Times

The process that Grubbs helped perfect is called metathesis
(pronounced meh-TATH-eh-sis), which means “changing places.”
It allows molecules to break & then form again as strong
“double bonds” of carbon atoms, creating new compounds.

Metathesis was first discovered & used in the 50s, but how
it worked remained a mystery until it was explained in 1971
by the French chemist Yves Chauvin & a student of his,
Jean-Louis Hérrison.

Schrock said of Grubbs’s work, “He was the one who really
took what I did & turned it into something practical.”

The remarkable thing about metathesis was that it worked
at all, Grubbs said. “Carbon-carbon double bonds are usually
one of the strongest points in the molecule,” he explained.
“To be able to rip them apart and put them back together
very cleanly was a complete surprise to organic chemists.”

The work of Grubbs & Schrock paved the way for metathesis
to become a cornerstone of chemical manufacturing. The
catalysts they developed, which are named for them, are in
wide use today in making chemicals for a variety of
manufacturing processes.

In addition to their other advantages, the new catalysts
produced far less waste, particularly hazardous waste. In
announcing that Grubbs, Chauvin & Schrock would share the
2005 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, the Royal Swedish Academy
of Sciences, which manages the prizes, said, “This
represents a great step forward for ‘green chemistry,’
reducing potentially hazardous waste thru smarter production.”

Robert Howard Grubbs was born on Feb. 27, 1942, on a farm
in western Kentucky between Calvert City & Possum Trot.
He was the 2nd of 3 kids of Howard & Faye Grubbs.

Robert’s maternal grandma was well read & educated, & his
mother became a schoolteacher, working for over 35 years
in small rural schools. She had received a teaching certif
when she was younger, but it took her 28 years to earn her
bachelor’s by taking night & weekend classes, sometimes
with Robert in tow.

Grubbs’s father was a mechanic who built the farmhouse
where his kids were born. He worked for the TVA, operating
& maintaining heavy equipment for dams in western Kentucky
& Tennessee.

In an autobio sketch for the Nobel committee, Grubbs wrote,
“The academic model of my mother & grandma & the very
practical mechanical training from my father turned out to
be perfect training for organic chemical research.”

Enrolling at the U of Florida, he majored in AG chemistry,
combining his interest in science, developed in junior hs,
& his boyhood passion for farming.

One summer, while working in an animal nutrition lab
analyzing steer feces, he was invited by a friend to work
in an organic chemistry lab being run by a new university
faculty member, Merle Battiste. Around that time, Grubbs
became absorbed in a book called “Mechanisms & Structure
in Organic Chemistry,” by E.S. Gould, which explained how
chemical reactions work. His lab experience & the book
persuaded him to devote himself to chemistry, he said.

It was a lecture at the university by Rowland Pettit, an
Australian chemist, that inspired Grubbs to begin looking
into the use of metals in organic chemistry, exploratory
work that would lead to the Nobel.

After earning his undergrad & master’s at the U of Florida,
he moved to Columbia U in New York for his doctoral degree,
working under Ronald Breslow. Dr. Battiste had been Dr.
Breslow’s first Ph.D. student. While at Columbia, Grubbs
met & married Helen O’Kane, who's a speech-language
pathologist from Brooklyn.

He obtained his Ph.D. in 1968 & then worked for a year at
Stanford U as a National Inst. of Health fellow. In 1969,
he joined the faculty of Michigan State U & worked there
until 1978. During that time he started his research on
catalysts in metathesis.

Grubbs was hired by Caltech in 1978 & worked there until
his death, advising & mentoring over 100 Ph.D. candidates
& almost 200 postdoc associates over the years.

In 1998, he & a chemistry postdoc fellow, Mike Giardello,
founded Materia, a Pasadena-based tech co that has the
exclusive rights to manufacture Grubbs’s catalysts. The
business was sold in 2017 to Umicore & then to ExxonMobil
this year.

Grubbs received the Ben Franklin Medal from the Franklin
Inst. in 2000 & was a member of the National Academy of
Sciences, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts &
Sciences & a member of the Royal Society of Chemistry.

In addition to his wife & son Barney, he's survived by
another son, Brendan; a daughter, Kathleen; two sisters,
Marie Maines and Bonnie Berry; & 4 grandkids.

As Grubbs wrote in his autobio sketch, his path toward
the Nobel had been set as a boy.

“As a child I was always interested in building things,”
he recalled. “Instead of buying candy, I'd purchase nails,
which I used to construct things out of scrap wood.”

Sometimes he'd help his father rebuild car engines, install
plumbing & build houses on the farms owned by his aunts &
uncles, who mostly lived close by in Kentucky.

But in the end, he wrote, he discovered that “building new
molecules was even more fun than building houses.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/24/science/robert-h-grubbs-dead.html