"The reason I got into this field is because I like to understand how you go from starting materials to products in a reaction. Among a lot of other particulars, that usually means understanding catalysts," said Grubbs, who is Atkins professor of chemistry at the California Institute of Technology.
Like highly skilled construction workers, catalysts make possible the building of precise structures -- in this case molecular structures, one after another -- without themselves being incorporated into the assembly.
"Once we do understand a catalyst and how it works, we can tinker with it and make it better," he said. "We can increase the rate of reaction, its efficiency and the selectivity of the catalyst."
His starting materials are usually molecules containing at least one carbon double-bonded to another. "I work with (these) olefins because they're often building blocks for polymers, pharmaceuticals and petrochemicals. So it's a basic technique with wide application," he said.
The catalysts Grubbs designs target the carbons, break open their double bonds and shuffle the fragments of original molecules around to form new materials. The result is a polymer whose chain length and properties are tailor-made for better plastics, for example, or a new intermediate molecule for making pharmaceuticals.
Grubbs credited his teachers with steering him toward chemistry, first "a phenomenal junior-high teacher," he said, and later one of his university professors, Merle Battiste: "His enthusiasm for understanding the mechanistic details of reactions was contagious."
The organic chemist received his undergraduate degree from the University of Florida in 1963 and his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1968. He is a member of the ACS divisions of organic, inorganic, organometallic and polymer chemistry.
The ACS Award for Creative Research in Homogeneous or Heterogeneous Catalysts is sponsored by Shell Oil Foundation.