Robert Howard Grubbs is an American chemist and Nobel laureate.
Education
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 (Bachelor of Science and Mississippi), where he worked with Merle Battiste, and Columbia University, where he obtained his Doctor of Philosophy under Ronald Breslow in 1968.
Career
As he noted in his official Nobel Prize autobiography, "In some places, my birthplace is listed as Calvert City and in others Possum Trot. 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".
Grubbs is married to Helen Grubbs, a retired SLP elementary school teacher, with three children—all of whom have earned a Doctor of Philosophy or an Doctor of Medicine In October 2010 Grubbs participated in the United States of America Science and Engineering Festival"s Lunch with a Laureate program where middle and high school students got to engage in an informal conversation with a Nobel Prize–winning scientist over a brown-bag lunch.
Membership
National Academy of Sciences]
He is a member of the United States of America Science and Engineering Festival"s Advisory Board. He is also a member of the Reliance Innovation Council formed by Reliance Industries Limited, India.