Robert Howard Grubbs (born February 27, 1942) is an American chemist and Nobel laureate.As he noted in his official Nobel Prize autobiography, "In some places, my birthplace is listed as Calvert City and in others Possum Trot.I was actually born between the two, so either one really is correct."He spent his early childhood in Marshall County and attended public school at McKinley Elementary, Franklin Junior High and Paducah Tilghman High School in Paducah, Kentucky. Grubbs studied chemistry at the University of Florida (B.S. and M.S.), where he worked with Merle Battiste, and Columbia University, where he obtained his Ph.D. under Ronald Breslow in 1968.He won American Institute of Chemists Gold Medal in 2010.