Fritz Haber was a German chemist who invented the process, later industrialized as the Haber-Bosch process, for synthesizing ammonia directly from nitrogen and hydrogen gas under high temperature and pressure, developed in 1909 and scaled to industrial production by chemist and engineer Carl Bosch. The process made possible the mass production of nitrogen-based fertilizers, and roughly a third of annual global food production still depends on ammonia made this way, supporting nearly half the world's population; Haber received the 1918 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery. During the First World War he also directed Germany's chemical weapons program and personally oversaw the first large-scale use of chlorine gas at the Second Battle of Ypres in 1915, earning him the description father of chemical warfare, a legacy in stark contrast to his agricultural breakthrough. Despite his wartime service and earlier conversion to Christianity, he was forced to resign his position after the Nazi rise to power in 1933 because of his Jewish heritage, and he died in Basel, Switzerland, in January 1934 while traveling toward a new research post.
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In Field
Source Wikipedia: Fritz Haber
Invented
First demonstrated the ammonia-synthesis reaction at laboratory scale in 1909, working with his assistant Robert Le Rossignol; Carl Bosch then scaled it to industrial production by 1910.
In the Other Atlases
- Also in Geography Atlas: Germany, nationality there.
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Fritz Haber
Infobox, Born row, year
Born: (1868-12-09)9 December 1868
Opening section, sentence on his death
died of heart failure mid-journey in a hotel in Basel, Switzerland on 29 January 1934, aged 65
Lead sentence, descriptive clause
was a German chemist who received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1918
Infobox, Born row, full date
(1868-12-09)9 December 1868
Infobox, Died row
29 January 1934(1934-01-29) (aged 65)
Lead sentence, full name
Fritz Jakob Haber (German:
In Field: Chemical Engineering, Categories
German chemical engineers
View the SourceFrequently Asked Questions
How did Fritz Haber's ammonia synthesis become an industrial process, and why is he also called the father of chemical warfare?
He made ammonia in 1909, Carl Bosch scaled it up in 1913, and he won the 1918 Nobel Prize in Chemistry; he also led German gas warfare in World War I.
In 1909 Haber was the first chemist to successfully create ammonia by synthetic means, at about 500 Celsius and 2900 psi in the presence of a catalyst, but only at laboratory quantity. In 1913 Carl Bosch of BASF scaled it up to industrial levels, giving the Haber-Bosch process, and Haber was awarded the 1918 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for this work, though he received it in 1919. It is estimated that a third of annual global food production uses ammonia from this process. He is also called the father of chemical warfare because in World War I he led the teams developing chlorine and other poisonous gases, first proposing chlorine to break the trench deadlock at the Second Battle of Ypres.
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