Robert H. Grubbs

Who is Robert H. Grubbs?

Robert Howard Grubbs is an American chemist and Nobel laureate.

As he noted in his official Nobel Prize autobiography, "In some places, my birthplace is listed as Calvert City and in others Possum Trot [NB: both in Marshall County]. I was actually born between the two, so either one really is correct." He spent his early childhood in Marshall County and attended public school at McKinley Elementary, Franklin Junior High and Paducah Tilghman High School in Paducah, Kentucky. Grubbs studied chemistry at the University of Florida, where he worked with Merle Battiste, and Columbia University, where he obtained his Ph.D. under Ronald Breslow in 1968.

He next spent a year with James Collman at Stanford University. He was then appointed to the faculty of Michigan State University. In 1978 he moved to California Institute of Technology where he is the Victor and Elizabeth Atkins Professor of Chemistry.

His main interests in organometallic chemistry and synthetic chemistry are catalysts, notably Grubbs' catalyst for olefin metathesis and ring-opening metathesis polymerization with cyclic olefins such as norbornene. He also contributed to the development of so-called "living polymerization".