Follow the story of Tim Greyson from his PhD training in Physical Organic Chemistry at MIT to an unlikely discovery in the wilderness of Quebec. From his early days in a prominent oil company entrenched in legacy chemistry, through his struggles with adoption of new technology in formulations, his inherent belief in the value of how things work, shaped by his time at MIT and his naïve business acumen and lack of social skills, met with a relentless resistance, limiting his commercial success to small pieces of business far afield from existing customers and off the radar of corporate management. Only in Tim’s retirement, free to pursue the ultimate mechanistic questions of chemistry, with the support of life-long friends and colleagues, did he achieve his dream of using fundamental understanding of chemical pathways for significant marketable innovation. Along the way, Tim and his team ultimately make an unexpected discovery of global scientific and technological significance and solve one of the most significant problems facing man and earth.