ABSTRACT
The 1912 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was split between Victor Grignard and Paul Sabatier. Grignard's contribution was to the development of organomagnesium compounds “the so-called Grignard reagent, which in recent years has greatly advanced the progress of organic chemistry.” Sabatier, along with Senderens performed tests on ethylene similar to those done by Moissan on acetylene. During his lecture, Sabatier references a cruel bereavement in 1898 which made it impossible for him to do any useful work for many months. Senderens and Sabatier then went on to show the wide scope of the reaction, reducing both alkenes and alkynes to alkanes in very high yields and notably without byproducts or isomerizations. It needs to be remembered what Grignard refers to as an organic radical, we consider today to be an anion. Grignard set out to improve upon the organometallic compounds where the organic portion of this union acts as a reagent in chemical synthesis.
