He married Nancy Carlson in 1971 and has two children, Andrew and Eric. Nancy Schrock is the Thomas F. Peterson, Jr. Conservator of Special Collections for the MIT Libraries. The family live in Winchester, Massachusetts.[2]
In 2005, Schrock received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, along with Robert H. Grubbs and Yves Chauvin, for his work in the area of olefin metathesis, an organic synthesis technique. Schrock was the first to elucidate the structure and mechanism of so called 'black box' olefin metathesis catalysts. Initial work at DuPont involved the synthesis of tantalum alkylidenes, alkylidenes being a crucial resting state in the catalytic cycle of olefin metathesis. His work at MIT has led to a detailed understanding of a group of molybdenum alkylidenes and alkylidynes which are active olefin and alkyne methathesis catalysts, respectively. Schrock has done much work to demonstrate that metallacyclobutanes are the key intermediate in olefin metathesis, with metallacyclobutadienes being the key intermediate in alkyne methathesis.
Many supporting ligands have been explored in efforts to better understand the nature of the single molecule catalysts, most notably 2,6-diisopropylphenylimido and adamantylimido, as well as various tert-butyl alkoxides with varying degrees of fluorination. The prototypical Schrock catalyst is (R"O)2(R'N)Mo(CHR) where R = tert-butyl, R' = 2,6-diisopropylphenyl, and R" = C(Me)(CF3)2. Such catalysts are now commercially available from such major suppliers as Sigma-Aldrich, and are used frequently in synthetic applications of olefin metathesis. Schrock's work is ongoing with goals of furthering the understanding of metathesis selectivity, developing new catalyst architectures, as well as projects outside of metathesis, such as elucidating the mechanism of dinitrogen fixation and developing single molecule catalysts which form ammonia from dinitrogen, mimicking the activity of nitrogenase enzymes in biology.
