Nobel Prize in Chemistry Awarded

An anonymous reader writes "The Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2005 has been jointly awarded to Robert H. Grubbs (California Institute of Technology), Richard R. Schrock (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), and Yves Chauvin (Institut Français du Pétrole) for the development of the metathesis method in organic synthesis." Advanced [PDF] and supplementary [PDF] information is also available from the Nobel Prize site.

Comments

Grubbs is great

[rgmoore]

I took a class (Ch41, Chemistry of Covalent Compounds) from Professor Grubbs, and he is an excellent teacher as well as a great scientist. He can also take a joke. The following was published in Nothing, an unofficial humor paper published by a couple of bored Techers, and based by a standard lecture that Grubbs gave to every Organic Chemistry class before their first test.

Caltech Professor Lashes Out Against High Energy Reaction

In a remarkable demonstration of unbridled passion, Caltech professor Rober Brubbs yesterday lashed out against a high energy reaction--namely, one which includes the formation of a quintuply-bonded carbon. Provoked to a fever pitch by the prospect of dsp3 hybridization in a first period species, he opined: "This reaction doesn't have a chance in hell of happening." He proceeded to characterize quintuply-bonded carbons as "bad", "no good", "undesirable", and "a damned silly notion." After his oration Professor Gurbbs nonchalantly continued with the lecture.

Earlier this mornin, students and other various members of the Caltech and Pasadena communities picketed Grubbs' office to demand retraction of his libelous comments. At the protest, Jennifer O'Leary, spokeswoman for the Quintuply-Bonded Carbon Anti-Defamation League, characterized Grubbs's statement as "shocking" and vowed, "He hasn't heard the last of us. High-energy reaction have just as much a chance of happening as any other. Grubbs's evil exergonocentrist demagoguery demands retraction." Nothing has also received reports from reliable sources that Grubbs has received death threats from both the Brotherhood for Hybridization Freedom and the Carbonic Liberation Front, left-wing propentavalent reactionist groups.

In a response to the same event, the Coalition for Traditional Carbon Valence made public this statement: "We applaud Professor Grubbs for his courageous stand against the poison of quintuple bonds."

Professor Grubbs was unavailable for comment after the lecture as his office refused to return phone calls.

Caltech Security stated that in order to maintain a suitable atmosphere for study and research it would investigate the matter to the fullest extent of its capabilities.

(Information in this story gathered by reporters on fat expense account.)

Embarassed of a Nobel prize?

[n01]

That's what Yves Chauvin is.

He wants to live reclusively, and doesn't plan to go to Sweden to receive his medal.

Source: http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/mensch/0,1518,3 78142,00.html
translation: http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/trurl_pag econtent?lp=de_en&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.spiegel.de% 2Fwissenschaft%2Fmensch%2F0%2C1518%2C378142%2C00.h tml

awesome potential

[smellsofbikes]

These are spectacular reactions: they allow for all sorts of neat syntheses if you can just form terminal alkenes, which isn't too hard. The systems aren't horribly abusive to most side-chains so you don't have to spend lots of time (and reduce your yield) protecting everything in sight.

I think it's interesting how many nobel prizes have been given for work on the C=C bond: Diels-Alder, Wittig, reduction, oxidation... I think that more nobels have been given for x-ray techniques than anything else, but this must be well up there. (Of course that depends on how broadly you classify your groupings.)

But this particular synthesis is already producing some amazing results in bioactive materials, and it should be a strong industrial technique, given its apparent robustness. Back when I was doing organic chemistry, I was trying to make a weird cyclopropene using a synthesis that was multi-step and very low yield. I wish I'd read about this.

Re:awesome potential

[smellsofbikes]

A lot of strain, yeah.

I was in an advanced organic synthesis class. The project was "make something new. Preferably by an unusual synthesis." My first project is not discussable these days, given the current political climate, but my second project was making a cyclopropene, turning it into a cyclohexene (!), and then turning THAT into a spiro compound with one six and one seven membered ring. (!!!) It was way out there on the weirdness scale, but the problem was that the cyclopropene was, as one might expect, very suseptible to polymerization, so I mostly ended up making round-bottom flasks full of solid brown tar. I could dig up the papers from which I was working, but this was, uh, 15 years ago (eeeek!) and I can't remember all the details off the top of my head. I can't imagine what one could do with a metathesis reaction, although I suspect you'd spend most of your time just synthesizing the catalyst. Most of those look like boogers to make, and not very many were/are commercially available (and those that are probably cost hundreds of dollars a gram.)

Re:awesome potential

[frozenraisin]

I'm pretty sure you can't make cyclopropenes with metathesis. The thermodynamics of that particular reaction are against you. The 1,4 diene starting material is often unreactive for transition metal catalyzed processes due to catalyst inhibition. Cyclopropenes, at least these days, are best prepared using rhodium(II) catalyzed cyclopropenation of alkynes.

Good Show

[Jim_Callahan]

I like Nobel Prizes in Chem. They're usually actually important discoveries, as evidenced by the fact that chemists use them constantly two decades after their formulation. The literature-type prizes, I'm still not so sure about.

Who got 50% and which of them get 25% ???

[Ossifer]

According to Nobel rules, the prize be be 100% to one person, 50-50% amongst two winners, or 50-25-25% if three. I haven't been able to determine from the news stories which of them gets the 50%... Anyone know? Probably the French guy...

A Chem Nobel Prize that actually goes to chemists!

[Jonathan]

It's interesting that this year the chemistry nobel prize actually goes to chemists this year -- the last two years it went to molecular biologists...

Dumbing a complicated subject down

[aphexbrett]

"Metathesis can be compared to a dance in which the couples change partners."

This has to be the worst quote I've ever heard describing Grubbs' catalyst. When I woke up this morning and heard that Grubbs had won the Nobel I wondered what the brief description of his work was going to be, and I honestly have to say I was amazingly disappointed with it. However this is part of a larger problem that I've encountered often especially on this webpage, how do you explain complicated subjects to the uninformed masses? How do you explain detailed chemistry to computer geeks? In some cases a pretty simplistic idea is transferred successfully, but this is the exception rather than the rule. IMO, the comments left about the story tend to further complicate the matter.

Having use chemistry developed by Grubbs I'll provide a brief description of his remarkable achievements in the field of organic synthesis (one of the serveral fields Grubbs has impacted [Grubbs is however an organometallic / inorganic chemist]). Organic synthesis is the study of building complext molecules from simple starting materials. The "goal" of organic synthesis is to make compounds with biological activity, e.g. new drugs. Many of the target compounds are initially isolated from nature, chemist then try to replicate them in the lab environment. One of the catalysts Grubbs developed allowed for synthesis of a particularly common structural feature (I'm thinking of cyclic structures, there are more, I know) and it opened whole new doors in terms of synthetic routes that one could take to complete a molecule. It was fairly evident in the mid 90s that his work had a huge impact on the synthetic community and it was apparent he would win the nobel, it was just a matter of time.

Re:Fuel?

[twiddlingbits]

That's the Fischer-Tropsch process to take coal and convert/refine into high octane gasoline. It was invented in Germany in the 1920's. Fischer was awarded the Nobel in Chemistry (1902) but not for for this idea. South Afica makes most of thier gasoline this way still since they adopted the process when embargoed in the 1980s for Apartheid. SA has lots of coal but not much oil. Sasol and Shell are using the process today to make gasoline from coal in SA and from natural gas in Malaysia. It's quite a good process, very scalable to industrial use. Why we don't use it in the USA I don't know as we also have plenty of coal.