That They Were: The Two Sides of Scientific Genius | Fritz Haber in Black and White

_{The Two Sides of Scientific Genius: Fritz Haber}

“During peace time a scientist belongs to the World, but during war time he belongs to his country”. -- Fritz Haber

_{BLACK | April 1915}

The battle was fierce, and a bit redundant. As fierce and refundant, in fact, as it had mostly been throughout the year. The soldiers were tired, but the War was relatively just beginning. It was a War unlike anything ever seen in human history. Yet all sides were still fresh of hope.

So even though the soldiers were tired, they fought with vervor; with passion, because they believed it was a War any of them could win, with just the right dose of determination.

They were wrong! And the French and Algerian soldiers fighting in Ypres, Belgium, would soon find out.

They had been fighting valiantly, the French and Algerian soldiers; giving the best that they can, when suddenly they noticed a strange yellow-grey coloured cloud floating across no-man's land in their direction._[1] In no time at all, men began to fall over, coughing and spurting, rolling in agony, gasping for air and then frothing from the mouth.

To the people who weren't close to the strange cloud the scene felt like a page from a medieval sorcery texts, and yet it was all too real; these were their comrades, falling to their deaths without any gun being shot. So the remaining soldiers took to their heels, scarred forever. Courage, they've found, isn't enough. War is changed forever.

Not long after six thousands (6000) French and Belgium Alied soldiers had died from the unknown gas in Ypres, a man came into the battlefield--presumably dressed in black--perfoming inspections on the dead bodies with his own face covered with a thick, heavy gas mask.

He had other men in masks with him, whom he shouted orders at, as he documented his observations. All in all the test had been a more than successful one, and, realizing this, he smiled to himself. The first phase was done.

This man was Fritz Haber. One of the greatest scientist of the twentieth century._[2]

<sub>WHITE | Summer 1909


haber process I</sub>

The problem was Nitrogen. And because of this, millions were starving all around the world. And if the problem was not solved, many, many more would die!

Demands for fertilizers were at an all time high, you see, and the available Nitrogen deposits, obtained by primitive mining, were getting more and more depleted by the second.

If this should go on, the experts warned, the amount of death by starvation would skyrocket. And yet the problem was Nitrogen; the very same Nitrogen of which the air around us contain almost 80%. The problem, however, was not merely finding Nitrogen, but devising a suitable method by whic this remarkably abundant Nitrogen(N) can be converted into Ammonia (NH3).

The problem was that the atmosphere (air around us) contains not the base Nitrogen(N), but Nitrogen gas (N2), which just happens to be a remarkably stable gas that does not react readily with other compounds/elements. But thankfully a genius scientist, with the help of his assistant, was able to develop a solution to this quandary.

With the aid of certain high pressure devices and catalysts, he was able to successfully synthesize ammonia (NH3) at laboratory scale using Nitrogen obtained freely from the atmosphere.

Basically the process involves the conversion of Nitrogen gas at very high temperature and pressure (400–500 °C or 752–932 °F), (15 -25 MPa, 150–250 atm or 2,200–3,600 psi) respectively _[3], as it is being passed continually over a bed of Iron (Fe) or four different catalysts-- Pitassium Oxide (K2O), Calcium Oxide (CaO), Silicon Oxide (SiO2), and Aluminium oxide (Al2O3)--all the while making sure the gases are cooled at each pass, so as to maintain a reasonable equilibrium constant.

Thanks to this process, we are now able to produce close to 450 million tonnes of nitrogen fertilizer per year, in the form of anhydrous ammonia, ammonium nitrate, and urea.

Thanks to this process billions of people--including you and I--are able to eat as our palates desire.

Thanks to this process billions of lives around the world are saved. And who was the genius behind its invention?

Fritz Haber. One of the greatest scientist of the 20th century.

_{BLACK or WHITE | 1915}

Clara Immerwahr was a brilliant chemist. So brilliant, in fact, that she was not only the first female to be awarded a doctorate in chemistry in Germany, but also brilliant enough to be married to the great Fritz Haber, the inventor of death and life, so to say. _[4]

In May 1915, however, as Fritz Haber and his fellow German cohorts were celebrating the success of their devastating biological weapon, at a party hosted by Haber himself, Clara Immerwahr, being a pacifist and a woman right activist, could not stand it. And so she took her husband's gun, a service revolver, went into their garden, and shot herself in the heart. She died the following morning in the arms of her 13 year old son _[5].

She probably couldn't believe that her husband, who had saved millions of people around the world with his groundbreaking work on artificial Nitrogen Fixation, could be so wiiling, and so ecstatic about creating a device capable of taking as much lives as he had saved. And so Clara Immerwahr ended her own life.

Fritz Haber, however, went on with his work on chemical weapon, eventually creating an even more powerful one, Phosgene, than the one he used in Ypres. And since then even more powerful more devastating chemical weapons have been, and are still being, created.

_CONCLUSION

How does such a great scientist become at the same time a symbol of hope and death?

To answeer that question we must note that Fritz Haber was not the only one torn between disinterest and loyalty to his country during the World War, a lot of scientists/writers/men of letters made their decisions at the time. And of course only History can judge.

One thing's for certain--History is a double edged sword, and science is even more so. If we are to learn anything from Fritz Haber's life, it is, at least, that science can be either a force for great, great good, or a weapon for unspeakable evil. As in all things, the choice is ours.

Choose wisely.

_{Fritz Haber later went on to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in the year 1918 for his work on ammonia synthesis from atmospheric Nitrogen.}

_{Afraid, and ashamed of his Jewish origin, he would later flee the Nazi Germany, and die in Basel, Switzerland in 1934.[6]}

_REFERENCES

1. Stoltzenberg, Dietrich (2004). Fritz Haber : Chemist, Nobel laureate, German, Jew. Philadelphia: Chemical Heritage Foundation.ISBN 0-941901-24-6.

2. https://books.google.ca/books?id=b3W7Fk63dbIC&pg=PT15

3. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process#cite_note-Appl-2

4. Carty, Ryan (2012) https://www.sciencehistory.org/distillations/magazine/casualty-of-war

5. http://www.historyinanhour.com/2014/04/22/fritz-haber-gas-warfare-summary/

6. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clara_Immerwahr#cite_note-stolzenberg-13
   
   

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