Robert H. Grubbs — Exemplifying excellence in teaching and research (2017)

Welcome to this special issue of the Journal of Polymer Science: Polymer Chemistry, with which we honor the outstanding career, accomplishments, and legacy of Dr. Robert H Grubbs in celebration of his 75th birthday. From humble beginnings in rural Kentucky to a decorated academic career at one of the most renowned universities, his journey has been remarkable. Professor Grubbs is acclaimed for winning the 2005 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his contributions to olefin metathesis. Equally outstanding is his development of emerging scientists, including 102 PhDs, 196 postdoctoral associates, and numerous undergraduate researchers. Nearly one third of those scientists have continued to an academic career. His contribution has been pivotal to advancing polymer science in the form of ring-opening metathesis polymerization (ROMP) and acyclic diene metathesis (ADMET) techniques. Professor Grubbs started his undergraduate research working with Professor Merle Battiste in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Florida. In this issue's article from the University of Florida, the sample-generating synthesis work was done in collaboration with scientists at Sumitomo Chemical Company. Remarkably, this work was done in the same laboratory room, in the same historic building (Leigh Hall) where Professor Grubbs did his first chemical reaction as an undergraduate researcher. Robert (Bob) Grubbs was born Bobby Howard Grubbs in a house built by his father in a place (between Possum Trot and Calvert City in Kentucky) at a time when it would be entirely normal to be given a name like Bobby Howard. Because his mother had often been sick as a child she had not been of much use on the family strawberry farm and got shipped off to college instead, where she earned a teaching certificate and subsequently taught elementary school for almost four decades. His father, after serving with the US Army in World War II, trained as a diesel mechanic before working for the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) on the many dams that they built in western Kentucky and Tennessee. As Bob wrote in his Nobel biography, “The academic model of my mother and grandmother and the very practical, mechanical training from my father turned out to be perfect training for organic chemical research.” 1 Bob completed his secondary education in the nearby city of Paducah while working a variety of jobs, most on local farms—notably cutting and hanging tobacco. In 1952, the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, which produced enriched uranium for the US Atomic Energy Commission and took advantage of the electricity available from the TVA dams, opened and brought a number of scientists to the area, some of whom became influential junior high and high school teachers. When Bob finally headed off to college at the University of Florida on a Greyhound bus with a bag packed with his mother's pecan pies, he aimed to combine his interests in science and agriculture by studying Agricultural Chemistry (though if asked, he might admit to having wanted to become a sage instead). He soon found that reality of Agricultural Chemistry—analyzing cow feces and mouth-pipetting pig blood—was not necessarily so appealing, even back when one was still allowed to use a lit cigarette as an air filter in the lab. Happily for many of us, he got involved in organic research with Merle Battiste and set off on the career for which we now celebrate him. In a fine example of the inbreeding that exemplifies chemical careers in those days (and maybe still does), Battiste, who had recently completed his PhD with Ron Breslow at Columbia, encouraged Bob to go to Columbia to do a PhD with Breslow. This was in the heyday of physical organic chemistry, one of those disciplines that is always on the wane yet somehow constantly seems to train chemists who go on to greatly influence other disciplines—in this era, organometallic chemistry. Many notable things happened during Bob's time at Columbia: he carried out some fundamental work on cyclobutadiene anti-aromaticity. He changed his first name from Bobby to Robert. He married Helen O'Kane from Brooklyn. From there, he moved to Stanford as an NIH Fellow with Jim Collman where he first learned about olefin metathesis, before taking his first academic job at Michigan State University, which was the only place that offered him a position, in 1969. At MSU, he started hacking away at the metathesis problem and the rest is history. Bob dragged his family to Caltech in 1978. This was a great move scientifically and intellectually. It also provided a suitable environment for the outdoor activities that have helped to keep him sane for all these years. He took up rock climbing under the influence of some of his students (notably Dan Straus) as illustrated on the cover of this issue. This particular photo is exemplary of how he conducts his life, always striving for the best possible outcome. Later, he switched to the marginally safer activity of fly fishing. Bob has clearly demonstrated that continuously taking up technically challenging activities throughout one's life has the advantages of keeping the mind and body nimble, as well as keeping one humble. It is good to be reminded that you can be as clueless as anyone else in any given area, but it also good to remember how to learn to do something new and how to figure out how to do it well. Most importantly, Bob has set an exquisite example in building a scientific community where people help and respect one another. The large number of former Grubbs group members who have gone on to successful careers in academia, industry, and government jobs is a testament to his mentorship and guidance. He has been involved with a growing number of companies based upon research and ideas that came out of Caltech. In his telling of the old Ozark folktale Old Age in Arkansas, the celebrated folklorist Vance Randolph describes a traveler visiting a new land full of folk with strange customs that appears to be overrun with jackrabbits. An old gentleman with white whiskers seated on a rail fence relates to the traveler, “You can't expect me, at my time of life, to ketch jackrabbits like them young fellows.” 2 Bob is not yet ready to sit on that fence—there are too many rabbits left to pursue. In closing, to take a line from the official Toast of the Honorable Order of Kentucky Colonels, to which Bob was elected in 2006: “In a trying world darkened by hate and misunderstanding, he is a symbol of those virtues in which men find gallant faith and of the good men might distill from life.” 3 These days, this is an ideal to which we can all aspire. Over three-quarters of a century, Bob has done his best to live up to it and to distill plenty of good from life, both scientific and in general. Kenneth Wagener, Michael Bell - Department of Chemistry University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA Robert (Barney) Grubbs - Department of Chemistry Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY, USA Robert Waymouth - Department of Chemistry Stanford University, CA, USA