Seventh Annual
 
DOW DISTINGUISHED LECTURESHIP
 
presents
 
Prof. Robert H. Grubbs
California Institute of Technology
 
Sponsored by
 
DOW CHEMICAL
COMPANY
 
on
October 28-30, 1987
 
Department of Chemistry
Michigan State University
East Lansing, Michigan
 

 
LECTURE TOPICS
 
Wednesday, October 28,1987
"Mechanisms of Thermal and Photochemical Reactions of Metallacycles and Carbenes"
4:00 p.m., Room 138
Chemistry Building
Michigan State University
 
 
Thursday, October 29, 1987
"Polymer Synthesis Through Stable Organometallic Intermediates"
4:00 p.m., Room 138
Chemistry Building
Michigan State University
 
 
Friday, October 30, 1987
"New Reagents for Organic and Organometallic Synthesis"
4:00 p.m., Room 138
Chemistry Building
Michigan State University
 

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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Robert H. Grubbs was born in Calvert City, Kentucky on February 27, 1942. His educational journey took him from the Kentucky hills to the Florida swamps (B.S. 1963, M.S. 1965, Universityof Florida, Gainesville) to the streets of New York (Ph.D. with Dr. Ronald Breslow, 1968, Columbia University), and finally to sunny California (NIH Postdoctoral Fellow with Dr. James P. Collman, 1968-1969, Stanford University). He joined the faculty of Michigan State University as an Assistant Professor in 1969 and was quickly promoted to Associate Professor (1973) but yielded to the lure of the West Coast and returned to California in 1978 as a Full Professor of Chemistry at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena. His many outstanding contributions in teaching and research in organometallic chemistry have earned him a number of prestigious awards, including a Sloan Foundation Fellowship, a Dreyfus Teacher Scholar Award, an Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship, and the just announced 1988 American Chemical Society National Award in Organometallic Chemistry.

Dr. Grubbs' international reputation in organometallic chemistry has been recognized by appointments as Visiting Lecturer at Oxford and Geneva, as well as several institutions in the United States. He has also served on organizing committees for several international symposia on organometallic chemistry.

His early interest in small ring chemistry and the mechanism of the olefin metathesis reaction led to the discovery of metallacyclobutanes as organometallic intermediates, and ultimately to the discovery of the versatile metal-alkylidene complexes. These discoveries, along with his parallel interest in polymer supported organometallic catalysts have resulted in over one hundred research publications and several patents.

The research of Robert H. Grubbs is internationally recognized as seminal to our understanding of the chemistry of organometallic complexes, and to the development of a number of organometallic reagents valuable in organic synthesis.