François Auguste Victor Grignard was born in Cherbourg, France, on May 6, 1871. His mother was Marie Hébert Grignard; his father, Théophile Henri Grignard, was a sailmaker and foreman at the local marine arsenal. During his early education, Grignard's parents steered him towards a career as a teacher, and at age 18 he won a scholarship to the École Normale Spéciale, whose graduates routinely became secondary school teachers. But the school closed after he had completed only two years there, and then, despite further work at the University of Lyons, Grignard failed the mathematics exams that were then required for licensing as a teacher.

In 1892, Grignard did a year of compulsory military service, and upon his return to Lyons a friend urged him to study chemistry. Grignard had long considered chemistry scientifically uninteresting, believing it consisted mainly of unrelated facts and observations...