UC Riverside will welcome its first Nobel Prize-winning faculty member in fall, when Richard Schrock arrives to mentor junior professors, teach and share his experience with students.

Besides knowing a lot about chemistry, the winner of the 2005 Nobel Prize in chemistry already knows a lot about Riverside.

Schrock earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from UCR in 1975.

He’s returned to speak in the city several times since taking chemistry’s top award, including in 2006 and 2014.

Now he plans a longer-term stay.

“My experience as an undergraduate at UCR in research in the laboratory of James Pitts and thequality of the classes in chemistry prepared me for my Ph.D. experience at Harvard,” Schrocksaid in a statement. “I look forward to returning to UCR for a few years to give back some of what it gave to me.”

Schrock received his doctorate at Harvard in 1971. He then spent a year as a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow at Cambridge University, followed by three years at theCentral Research and Development Department of E.I. duPont de Nemours and Co., according to a news release from UC Riverside.

He joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty in 1975.

In 1990, Schrock was the first to produce an efficient metal-compound catalyst for methasesis, the Nobel prize committee wrote.

In metathesis reactions, double bonds are broken and made between carbon atoms in ways that cause atom groups to change places. This happens with the assistance of special catalyst molecules.

The process was first detailed in 1971. A catalyst that’s stable in air was developed in 1992. The scientists responsible for those discoveries share the 2005 Nobel prize with Schrock.

The reaction is now used daily in the chemical industry for the efficient and more environmentally friendly production of pharmaceuticals, fuels, synthetic fibers, and many other products, according to UC Riverside.

The university’s prestige will rise with the hire, said Cynthia Larive, UCR provost and executive vice chancellor.

“As a Nobel laureate and alumnus, he serves as an inspiring role model and affirms that there are no limits to what UCR students can accomplish,” Larive said in the news release. “Schrock’s choice to join UCR also emphasizes our growing status as a national leader in scientific research and discovery.”

Schrock will also be the first George K. Helmkamp Founder’s Chair in Chemistry, named after one of the founding faculty members of UCR’s Department of Chemistry. That position is honorary.