Robert Grubbs

Robert Howard Grubbs (born on February 27, 1942 Possum Trot, Kentucky, U.S.A.) is an American chemist and the Nobel Prize laureate in Chemistry in 2005 (Grubbs received the 2005 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, along with Richard R. Schrock and Yves Chauvin) for his work in the field of olefin metathesis).

Robert Grubbs was born on February 27, 1942 in Marshall County in the U.S. state of Kentucky, a place-between Possum Trot and Kelvert-Siti. He spent his early childhood there and attended public school at McKinley Elementary, Franklin Junior High and Paducah Tilghman High School. Grubbs received higher education in Florida and Columbia Universities. In 1968 he received his PhD. In 1969, he got a job at Stanford, and then - in the University of Michigan. In 1978 he became a member of the California Institute of Technology, where he works today.

His main interests in organometallic chemistry and synthetic chemistry are catalysts, notably Grubbs' catalyst for olefin metathesis. He also contributed to the development of so-called "living polymerization". In 1989, Grubbs was elected to the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, and in 1994 - a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Grubbs is married to Helen Grubbs, a retired SLP elementary school teacher, with three children—all of whom have earned a PhD or an M.D.

"Drug addiction is awful and terrible. I'm not interested in addiction and do not recommend anyone."