Franois Auguste Victor Grignard
Grignard, François Auguste Victor (1871-1935) was a French organic chemist whose work with organomagnesium compounds led to his discovery of the Grignard reaction. For this discovery, which greatly extended the scope of organic compound synthesis, Grignard received the 1912 Nobel Prize in chemistry. He shared the prize with Paul Sabatier, for related work.
Grignard attended public school in Cherbourg, where his father was foreman and sail maker for the marine arsenal. In 1889, he received a scholarship to the École Normale Spécial, at Cluny, but when disagreements arose about the reform of the secondary school system, the school closed, and Grignard went to the University of Lyons to finish his undergraduate studies. There, he studied mathematics, but he did poorly in his exams and left school in 1892 to do a year of obligatory military service. In 1893, he returned to the university, earning his mathematics degree in 1894.
Grignard accepted a junior position in the Lyons science department, working with organic chemist Philippe Antoine Barbier. But the work as lab assistant engaged him and he received a degree in physical science in 1898.
Grignard developed a close relationship with Barbier, which was an association that developed into a lifelong friendship. At that time, Barbier was experimenting with using methyl iodide and magnesium to convert an unsaturated ketone, a colorless, highly volatile organic compound, into its corresponding tertiary alcohol. This conversion had earlier been tried by Saytzeff, using zinc instead of magnesium, and Barbier encouraged Grignard to continue researching organomagnesium compounds as a possible thesis topic.
Grignard took up the challenge, first studying the problems other chemists had had with these compounds and the solutions they had arrived at. One such problem was that when organomagnesium compounds came into contact with air or carbon dioxide, they spontaneously ignited. Grignard began experimenting with ways to induce a methylation reaction (the replacement of hydrogen in methyl alcohol by a metal) by slightly varying the chemical solutions others had tried, though not entirely successfully. Grignard arrived at a preparation of magnesium alkyl halides, and in so doing actually discovered an important group of substances, called Grignard reagents, that are able to cause chemical reactions by which other substances can be produced.
The discovery of these Grignard reagents was made public in the spring of 1900 at a presentation to the French Academy of Sciences. The following year Grignard submitted his thesis, a lucid examination of these organic magnesium compounds and their importance to chemical synthesis, and received his doctorate in physical sciences from Lyons. Shortly thereafter, the work was published again, in a chemistry journal that brought his findings widespread attention.
The impact of Grignard's discovery quickly followed. The Grignard reagents were simple compounds but had extremely wide and important practical applications in organic synthesis, especially in the synthesis of hydrocarbons, carboxylic acids, and secondary and tertiary alcohols. Within seven years, more than 500 papers had been published regarding the use of these reagents in a multitude of ways, and by the time of Grignard's death, scientists had published more than 6,000 papers on his work. Grignard produced approximately 170 papers on his research and at the time of his death was working on a multivolume chemical reference work, Treatise on Organic Chemistry. It was completed by his collaborators in 1959.
Grignard also worked on many other problems of organic chemistry, including the cracking of hydrocarbons, catalytic hydrogenation and dehydrogenation processes, the condensation of carbonyls, and investigations into the makeup of unsaturated compounds by quantitative ozonization. During World War I (1914-1918), he studied the cracking of heavy benzenes and did research for the military on warfare gases and other chemical agents.
Grignard's acclaim for his discovery of the Grignard reagents also led to important academic appointments and numerous awards in addition to the Nobel Prize. Before the war he served on the chemistry faculties of the universities of Besančon, Nancy, and Lyon, and after the war he returned first to Nancy briefly before succeeding Barbier, in 1919, as professor of general chemistry at Lyon.
Grignard received the Cahours Prize from the Institut de France in both 1901 and 1902, the Bertholet Medal in 1902, the Prix Jecker in 1905, and the Lavoisier Medal in 1912.