Nobel Prize for green chemistry: Stance for a future

By awarding this year’s Nobel Prize for metathesis, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has rewarded the efforts to make the world more habitable and supports the stance for good and environment-friendly chemical practices. Yves Chauvin (France), Robert Grubbs (USA) and Richard Schrock (USA) shared the prize for their contribution to the development of metathesis (meaning ‘change places’), an energetically favoured and less hazardous method in organic synthesis, which has immense industrial applications. Apart from its applications in the polymer industry (for making stronger plastics), metathesis has also found an important role in biotechnology in recent years. ‘It represents a great step forward for “green chemistry”, reducing potentially hazardous waste through smarter production. Metathesis is an example of how important basic science has been for the benefit of man, society, and environment’, the prize committee commented. The discovery of olefin metathesis dates back to the 1950s, when some industrial chemists working in the petrochemical industry observed the unexpected formation of new olefins with random swapping of molecular parts, when gaseous alkenes were passed over Mo catalyst. A major breakthrough in the understanding of the mechanism of the process came in 1971 from Chauvin, who identified that olefin metathesis is initiated by the formation of a metal carbene. This work was monumental in that, in due course of time, it paved the way for metathesis in predesigned pathways, leading to selective formation of the desired molecular systems. Born in 1930, Chauvin is currently the Honorary Director of the French Petroleum Institute in Rueil-Malmaison near Paris. Schrock was born in Berne, Indiana in 1945. He received his Ph D from Harvard University and later joined the Department of Chemistry at MIT. Grubbs, 63, received his Ph D from Columbia University in 1968 and is currently a professor of chemistry at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena. Schrock and Grubbs played a significant role in the development of the right catalysts for metathesis, which revolutionized its industrial applications. Another important contributor to the early development of metathesis was Thomas J. Katz of Columbia University. Green chemistry is smart chemistry