Richard R. Schrock obtained his B. A. degree in 1967 from the University of Calfornia at Riverside and his Ph. D. degree from Harvard University in 1971. He spent one year as an NSF postdoctoral fellow at Cambridge University followed by three years at the Central Research and Development Department of E. I. duPont de Nemours and Company. In 1975 he moved to M.I.T. where he became full professor in 1980 and the Frederick G. Keyes Professor of Chemistry in 1989. His interests include the inorganic and organometallic chemistry of high oxidation state early metal complexes (especially those that contain an alkyl, alkylidene, or alkylidyne ligand), catalytic reactions and mechanisms of reactions involving alkyl or alkylidene complexes, especially olefin metathesis reactions, the chemistry of high oxidation state dinitrogen and related complexes, and the controlled synthesis of polymers prepared using well-defined organometallic initiators. He is perhaps best known for his discovery of "high oxidation state carbene" (alkylidene complexes) by alpha hydrogen abstraction in high oxidation state metal alkyl complexes. In the past few years he has applied alkylidene chemistry toward the controlled polymerization of olefins and acetylenes, ring-opening-metathesis polymerization (ROMP), the synthesis of ordered polymers containing organic or inorganic semiconductors or metal clusters, and the synthesis of polyenes by alkyne polymerization. Most recently he has focused on asymmetric ring closing metathesis reactions and the development of amido/donor ligands for preparing olefin polymerization catalysts and dinitrogen reduction platforms.

R. R. Schrock has been an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow and a Camille and Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar. He has received the ACS Award in Organometallic Chemistry (1985), the Harrison Howe Award of the Rochester ACS section (1990), an Alexander von Humboldt Award (1995), the ACS Award in Inorganic Chemistry (1996), the Bailar Medal from the University of Illinois (1998), and an ACS Cope Scholar Award in 2001. He has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences. He was Associate Editor of Organometallics for eight years, and has published more than 360 research papers.
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