Robert H. Grubbs, Caltech Nobel Prize winner who revolutionized green chemistry, dies

Robert H. Grubbs, the Caltech Nobel Prize winner whose strategies of breaking up molecules and rebuilding them in response to specification revolutionized the sector of natural chemistry, has died at 79.

Exploiting a course of often known as metathesis, during which carbon compounds trade components with each other, Grubbs confirmed how one can create a broad vary of latest merchandise, from environmentally pleasant plastics to resins to prescribed drugs.

His discoveries constructed on the work of two different scientists, Yves Chauvin of France and Richard Schrock of MIT, with whom he shared the $1.3-million Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2005. “He was the one who took what I did and turned it into one thing sensible,” Schrock mentioned on the time.

A serious advantage of Grubbs’ course of was that it minimized wasteful and dangerous byproducts of chemical reactions, an necessary advance within the discipline of what’s now known as inexperienced chemistry. “Bob’s power as a scientist was his creativity,” mentioned Dennis Dougherty, the Norman Davidson Management Chair in Chemistry at Caltech. “He was essentially the most inventive chemist I ever interacted with.”

Grubbs, who was admired as a lot for his heat and private simplicity as for his achievements, died of a coronary heart assault Dec. 19 on the Metropolis of Hope hospital in Duarte, the place he was being handled for lymphoma, his son Barney mentioned.

Robert H. Grubbs was born Feb. 27, 1942, in a farmhouse his father constructed close to Possum Trot, Ky. The center baby between two sisters, he described his upbringing as one thing out of a rural American novel of manners, with a supportive prolonged household of aunts, uncles and grandparents, a lot of them farmers in tobacco nation. His mom taught faculty for 35 years whereas his father labored as a mechanic for the Tennessee Valley Authority.

A lanky boy — he stood 6 toes, 6 inches in maturity — he was desirous about all issues mechanical; any cash earned was spent on nails as a substitute of sweet. Having spent his summers in farm work and development, he enrolled on the College of Florida as an agricultural chemistry main. There, he landed a summer season job analyzing steer feces.

A good friend working in a chemistry lab saved him from a profession learning animal matter, Grubbs mentioned, by inviting him to assist out at night time. “I discovered that natural chemical compounds smelled a lot better than steer feces and that there was nice pleasure in making new molecules,” he wrote later.

Natural compounds based mostly on advanced preparations of carbon atoms are the idea of all life that we all know. Studying how these compounds react on a molecular stage, and how one can adapt them to new makes use of, fascinated Grubbs as a scholar. “Constructing new molecules was much more enjoyable than constructing homes,” he mentioned.

He earned his bachelor and grasp’s levels on the College of Florida, then acquired his doctorate from Columbia College, the place he met and married his spouse, Helen O’Kane, who turned a particular schooling instructor. He spent a yr at Stanford College as a Nationwide Institutes of Well being fellow earlier than becoming a member of the school of Michigan State College in 1968. A decade later, he was employed by Caltech, the place he turned the Victor and Elizabeth Atkins Professor of Chemistry in 1990.

When his profession started, “organometallic chemistry was in its infancy and it supplied a fertile discipline for a mechanistic chemist,” Grubbs mentioned. He turned significantly desirous about metathesis, a phrase that means altering locations, involving chemical reactions during which two carbon-based molecules trade fragments underneath the affect of a 3rd molecule, often known as a catalyst. On this manner, bits of molecules will be selectively stripped out and changed with items from one other compound.

The pure course of was first noticed within the Nineteen Fifties within the petrochemical business, however scientists didn’t know what was happening, and even how one can use it. Chauvin supplied the primary theoretical mannequin in 1970, suggesting that the method is initiated by a household of chemical compounds known as metallic carbenes, during which a metallic atom is double-bonded to a carbon atom. In what has been likened to a dance, the metal-carbon double-bond binds to a carbon-carbon bond in a goal molecule, forming a hoop of 4 atoms. The 4 then separate into new couplets, with totally different companions.

On the Royal Swedish Academy of Science’s information convention asserting the Nobel award in 2005, the method was demonstrated by two dancing {couples}. All 4 dancers then joined palms earlier than separating once more, with every member dancing off with a brand new accomplice.

After Chauvin’s report, Schrock started looking for a catalyst that might perform the response in a predictable manner, lastly deciding on molybdenum and tungsten. The issue was that these metals weren’t steady in air and had been incompatible with many different compounds.

In 1992, Grubbs solved the issue through the use of ruthenium as a catalyst. It proved to be rather more steady and might be utilized in a wide range of substrates, together with water and alcohol. A type of compounds turned often known as the “Grubbs catalyst” and was the usual towards which all others had been measured.

To Grubbs, it was a shock the method labored. “Carbon-carbon double bonds are normally one of many strongest factors within the molecule,” Grubbs advised the New York Instances. “To have the ability to rip them aside and put them again collectively very cleanly was an entire shock to natural chemists.”

His work was tailored in a brand new household of custom-built compounds with specialised properties, akin to medicine for varied illnesses, plastics made out of vegetable oils, slightly than petroleum, and herbicides.

Grubbs’ unfussy method to his accomplishments revealed itself maybe greatest in his response to being named a Nobelist. “I had simply opened a bottle of fine port,” he advised the Los Angeles Instances’ Tom Maugh by cellphone from New Zealand, “so I continued consuming it.”

In his free time, he turned a climber, scaling rocks in Joshua Tree and Yosemite, and late in life adopted fly-fishing as a passion, his son mentioned.

Over his profession, Grubbs suggested and mentored greater than 100 doctoral candidates and nearly 200 postdoctoral associates. He additionally co-founded a number of firms, together with Materia Inc. of Pasadena, which held the rights to his catalysts.

“Bob was an inspiration to Caltech colleagues and to scientists all over the world, for his human qualities as a lot as for his pathbreaking contributions to analysis and society. We’ll keenly miss his knowledge and imaginative and prescient,” mentioned Caltech President Thomas F. Rosenbaum.

Moreover the Nobel Prize, Grubbs was the recipient of the Benjamin Franklin Medal from the Franklin Institute, the Arthur C. Cope Award from the American Chemical Society and the Gold Medal from the American Institute of Chemists. He was a member of the Nationwide Academy of Sciences, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the Honorable Order of Kentucky Colonels. He acquired honorary levels from, amongst others, the Georgia Institute of Know-how, the College of Crete in Greece, the College of Warwick in the UK, and Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen College in Germany.

He authored greater than 400 papers and held 80 patents.

Grubbs is survived by his spouse; kids Kathleen, Brendan and Barney; 4 grandchildren; and two sisters.

Johnson is a former Instances employees author. Workers author Gregory Yee contributed to this report.