Fritz Haber (1868

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Biography

Fritz Jakob Haber was a German chemist who received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1918 for his invention of the Haber process, a method used in industry to synthesize ammonia from nitrogen gas and hydrogen gas. This invention is important for the large-scale synthesis of fertilizers and explosives. It is estimated that a third of annual global food production uses ammonia from the Haber–Bosch process, and that this food supports nearly half the world's population. For this work, Haber has been called one of the most important scientists and industrial chemists in human history. Haber also, along with Max Born, proposed the Born–Haber cycle as a method for evaluating the lattice energy of an ionic solid.

Timeline

The story of Fritz Haber, told in moments.

1909 Event

Synthesized ammonia from atmospheric nitrogen. The Haber process would eventually feed billions. Half the nitrogen in your body passed through this reaction.

Half the nitrogen in every human body came through your process -- does that feel like redemption? Did you know what you'd done?

1915 Event

Personally supervised the first large-scale chlorine gas attack at Ypres. 5,000 Allied soldiers died. His wife Clara, also a chemist, shot herself with his military pistol ten days later.

How do you personally supervise a gas attack and go home to your wife? Did Clara's suicide change anything in you?

1918 Event

Won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for ammonia synthesis. Allied scientists boycotted the ceremony. They called him a war criminal.

What did it feel like accepting a Nobel while scientists called you a war criminal? Was the boycott deserved?

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