François Auguste Victor Grignard was a Nobel Prize-winning French chemist. Grignard was the son of a sail maker. After studying
mathematics at Lyon he transferred to chemistry, becoming a professor at the University of Nancy in 1910. During World War
I, he was transferred to the new field of chemical warfare, and worked on the manufacture of phosgene and the detection of
mustard gas. His counterpart on the German side was another Nobel Prize winning Chemist, Fritz Haber.