Victor Grignard

François Auguste Victor Grignard was born in eastern France on 6 May 1871. Working as a chemist, he discovered what became known as the Grignard reagent and the Grignard reaction—techniques that allow chemists to forge carbon–carbon bonds with unusual ease and precision. The breakthrough earned him the Nobel Prize and changed synthetic organic chemistry permanently, turning difficult multi-step syntheses into manageable procedures. He documented his work carefully in laboratory notebooks. Grignard died on 13 December 1935, leaving behind a method still taught in every undergraduate organic che…