Grignard, (François Auguste) Victor (1871-1935)

French chemist. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1912 for his discovery in 1900 of a series of organic compounds, the Grignard reagents, that found applications as some of the most versatile reagents in organic synthesis. Members of the class contain a hydrocarbon radical, magnesium, and a halogen such as chlorine.

Grignard was born in Cherbourg and studied at Lyon. He became professor at Nancy in 1910. During World War I he headed a department at the Sorbonne concerned with the development of chemical warfare. From 1919 he was professor at Lyon.

Grignard reagents added to formaldehyde (methanal) produce a primary alcohol; with any other aldehyde they form secondary alcohols, and added to ketones give rise to tertiary alcohols. They will also add to a carboxylic acid to produce first a ketone and ultimately a tertiary alcohol.

His multivolume Treatise on Organic Chemistry/Traité de chimie organique began publication in 1935.