Work

Chauvin worked for most of his life at the French Petroleum Institute. The institute is famous for creating new chemicals from petroleum. But rather than do what people were already doing, Chauvin became interested in a kind of chemical reaction called ‘olefin metathesis’. In 1971, he succeeded in discovering how this method works.

The word 'metathesis' comes from the Greek ‘meta’ (change) and ‘thesis’ (position). In metathesis reactions, bonds between atoms are broken and reformed in ways that cause atom groups to change places. An olefin is a type of organic compound that has double bonds between the carbon atoms. In olefin metathesis, the atoms on either side of the double bond are swapped to create a new compound.

Here’s a metathesis experiment you can try in the lab. Take a few drops of silver nitrate and add a few drops of sodium chloride. The solution will turn cloudy. This is because sodium and silver have exchanged places, creating sodium nitrate and silver chloride, which is insoluble in water and causes the cloudiness.

Olefin metathesis has become very important for green chemistry. It enables chemists to imagine new kinds of organic molecules by swapping parts of old ones. The properties of these compounds can be worked out from the tenets of chemistry. If anything promises to be useful, only then does it have to be actually made in the lab. And since the old chemical is transformed into the new, there are no unnecessary by-products. This avoids a huge amount of waste that could have been hazardous.

For this contribution, he shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2005 with Robert Grubbs and Richard Schrock.

Biography

Yves Chauvin was born in Menin, Belgium in 1930. Though he lived there for much of his childhood, he went to school across the border in France!

He joined ESCIL, the leading school for industrial chemistry in France, and trained as a chemical engineer. He passed out in 1954 and joined the industry. However he was soon dissatisfied with the methods of managers, which he described as “Do what everyone else does”. His motto in life is “If you want to find something new, look for something new!”

He worked at the French Petroleum Institute from 1960 to 1995. It was there that he made his most important contribution, metathesis. He used metathesis to develop new kinds of reactions called Dimersol and Alphabutol, which are used to produce important materials. He retired as research director in 1995.

Alongside the Nobel Prize, his honours include membership of the French Academy of Sciences. He was appointed a Grand Officer of the Order of Merit by the President of France in 2005.