Robert H. Grubbs, who shared the 2005 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his key contributions in understanding a chemical reaction called metathesis, leading to widespread applications in products from plastics to pharmaceuticals, died Dec. 19 at a hospital in Duarte, Calif. He was 79.

The death was announced by Caltech, the university in Pasadena, Calif., where Grubbs was a faculty member for more than 40 years. He had a heart attack after undergoing treatment for lymphoma.

Grubbs built on the work of two other chemists with whom he shared the Nobel: Yves Chauvin of France and Richard Schrock of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The $1.3 million prize was split among the three.

In the 1950s, scientists had observed chemical reactions in organic molecules exchange parts to create new compounds. Chauvin was the first scientist to explain, in the early 1970s, how the process occurred and how it could be enhanced by the introduction of certain metallic compounds.

Schrock discovered that two metals, tungsten and molybdenum, were effective catalysts in producing metathesis, which means “changing places.” The metals caused carbon bonds in molecules to break apart and then rearrange themselves in different ways, creating new chemical bonds.

In 1992, Grubbs improved the process by demonstrating that another metal, ruthenium, was a more stable catalyst and was easily adapted for use in air, water or alcohol.

“He was the one who really took what I did and turned it into something truly practical,” Schrock said in 2005, when the Nobel was announced.

“For those without a background in chemistry, I think the best way to explain it is that it’s a tool,” Grubbs told Chemistry World in 2018. “Just like how you need certain tools to build a house, the same is true for molecules. As a very basic definition, metathesis is a new tool to build these molecules. At the next level, it’s about making carbon-carbon bonds, which is what organic chemistry is all about.”

The discoveries in metathesis allowed for the development of new organic compounds, built through carbon-carbon bonds. The compounds have had wide-ranging uses in medicine, engineering and construction materials.

Among other applications, products once made from petroleum can now be derived from vegetable oils. A sports manufacturer has developed a plastic baseball bat from compounds created through metathesis.

“Metathesis reactions are an important tool in the creation of new drugs to fight many of the world’s major diseases, including cancer, Alzheimer’s and AIDS,” William Carroll, then president of the American Chemical Society, told the Los Angeles Times in 2005. “They also are used to develop herbicides, new polymers and fuels.”

In awarding the Nobel Prize in 2005, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences also noted that the advance “represents a great step forward for ‘green chemistry,’ reducing potentially hazardous waste through smarter production.”

Robert Howard Grubbs was born Feb. 27, 1942, on a farm near Possum Trot, Ky. He was a child when his family moved to the western Kentucky city of Paducah. His father was a diesel mechanic, and his mother was a teacher.

Grubbs, who stood 6-foot-6, had done farm work throughout his youth and went to the University of Florida with the intention of studying agricultural sciences. While working on a summer project in which he analyzed steer feces, he was invited to help a friend in an organic chemistry laboratory. Grubbs soon changed his scientific focus.

“I found that organic chemicals smelled much better than steer feces,” he said in a biographical statement on the Nobel Prize website, “and that there was great joy in making new molecules.”

He received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in chemistry from Florida in 1963 and 1965, respectively, followed by a doctorate in chemistry from Columbia University in 1968. After a postgraduate year at Stanford University, he joined the Michigan State University faculty in 1969 and began his research in metathesis.

He had several fellowships, including one to study at the Max Planck Institute in Germany, before moving to Caltech in 1978. He taught classes, led a research laboratory and in 1998 helped establish a company, Materia, to spur the development of commercial products from his discoveries. The business was sold in 2017.

In recent years, Grubbs concentrated on developing inexpensive organic compounds that could reduce the amount of hazardous industrial waste in the environment. He trained hundreds of scientists at Caltech and lectured all over the world – including at his old high school in Paducah.

Survivors include his wife of more than 50 years, the former Helen O’Kane; three children; two sisters; and four grandchildren.

After Grubbs’s death, the official Nobel Prize Twitter account tweeted a statement attributed to him: “You don’t have to work all the time, but you should think all the time.”