As a child, I was always interested in building things. Instead of buying candy, I would purchase nails, which I used to construct things out of scrap wood. My mother always claimed that my spending my money on nails instead of on candy was why I was so skinny as a kid.

I was born at home in rural Kentucky, in 1942, in a house that my father Howard had built. He did most of the construction himself and built it on land that his father had given him when he married my mother Faye.

Like the Tebbe complex, ruthenium olefin metathesis catalysts can be used for the production of living polymers.

My interest in science started in junior high school where an outstanding science teacher, Mrs. Baumgardner, introduced me to the joys of science.