Yves Chauvin, 2005 Nobel Laureate, has passed away on January 27, aged 84.

Born on October 10, 1930, in Menin, Belgium, Yves Chauvin studied chemical engineering at the École Supérieure de Chimie Industrielle de Lyon, France. He spent most of his research career at the Institut Français du Pétrole (IFP) in Rueil-Malmaison, France, which he joined in 1960 as a research engineer in thermodynamics and applied kinetics and where he became research director in 1991.

Professor Chauvin’s research focused on organic synthesis and homogeneous catalysis, especially metathesis, oligomerization and polymerization. In 1971, he identified the eponymous reaction mechanism at work in olefin metathesis. Among other honors, he received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry “for the development of the metathesis method in organic synthesis”, together with Robert Grubbs and Richard R. Schrock. He was elected a member of the French Academy of Sciences in 2005.

Selected Publications

• A silver and water free metathesis reaction: a route to ionic liquids,
  Hassan Srour, Hélène Rouault, Catherine C. Santini, Yves Chauvin,
  Green Chem. 2013, 15, 1341–1347.
  DOI: 10.1039/C3GC37034H
• Olefin Metathesis: The Early Days (Nobel Lecture),
  Yves Chauvin,
  Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2006, 45, 3740–3747.
  DOI: 10.1002/anie.200601234
• Catalyse de transformation des oléfines par les complexes du tungstène. II. Télomérisation des oléfines cycliques en présence d’oléfines acycliques (in French),
  Par Jean-Louis Hérisson, Yves Chauvin,
  Makromol. Chem. 1971, 141, 161–176.
  DOI: 10.1002/macp.1971.021410112