Haber not Einstein - "Nature's" Choice Quiz

Answer: Saltpeter

"Nature's" selection of the Haber-Bosch process for the synthesis of ammonia as the most important scientific advance of the 20th century has sparked a good deal of discussion and controversy. Not only have the benefits to humanity been gained at the price of decidedly significant environmental damage, but Haber's personal conduct has been the subject of understandable scrutiny.

Despite making up 78% of our atmosphere, the availability of chemically active nitrogen in soil is insufficient to sustain intensive agriculture. In the 18th century, bird guano was the main source of nitrogen for fertilization. As it became depleted, farmers turned to saltpeter, the principal source of which was mining operations in Chile. At the beginning of the 20th century, experts estimated that the supply of saltpeter would be depleted by 1940 and that worldwide starvation would ensue.

Answer: Both

Fritz Haber was the son of a Jewish chemical merchant. He left the family business to pursue an academic career. By age 40, he had gained a full professorship in physical chemistry and written two influential books. Biographers and contemporaries pronounced Haber to be intensely ambitious. Conversion to Christianity was one tactic Haber employed to further those ambitions.

A number of scientists had attempted to develop a process to produce large quantities of bound nitrogen from atmospheric nitrogen for use in fertilizers. In theory, because the combination of 3H + N to yield NH3 was energy producing, it should be possible with the proper catalyst to devise a self-sustaining (or at least minimal energy requiring) reaction to generate ammonia. It was the 40-year-old Fritz Haber who succeeded in finding the optimum temperature and catalyst in 1908. Carl Bosch refined the process and made it capable of economically producing essentially unlimited quantities of ammonia. Thus intensive agriculture could not only be sustained but expanded. Haber's techniques were successfully applied to the production of other important chemicals including methyl alcohol and nitric acid.

Answer: Two billion

Without the intensive agriculture that the Haber-Bosch process makes possible, it is estimated that two billion people would be starving in the early 21st century. With that in mind, it is easy to see how the editors of "Nature" would consider this innovation to be more significant than the theories of Einstein or the wonders wrought by electricity or computers. As Vaclav Smil, an agricultural historian points out, "You can imagine the world without computers or electricity, but it's very difficult to imagine people not eating every day."

Fritz Haber's contribution was the result of dogged determination in the pursuit of specific technology. His achievement has been compared to that of Robert Oppenheimer's in the production of the atom bomb and in contrast to Einstein's theoretical work that underpins that application. (An analogy made more apt by the use of Haber's process to produce munitions.) However, Haber was a talented and highly regarded physical chemist and unlike Oppenheimer, he advanced techniques that had and have application beyond that of the solution of a single problem.

Answer: Both

Some have estimated that without the food and munitions that Haber's process made possible that Germany would have run out of ammunition and been starved into submission as early as 1915. It is further theorized that the draconian measures that the Allies imposed on Germany would not have eventuated had the war been shorter and the loss of men and treasure been less. Thus, it is argued, fascism would not have taken root in Germany.

Answer: All of these

Even had Haber's synthetic process been used only for fertilizer and not munitions, we would still be facing the environmental challenges that are a direct consequence of large-scale intensive agriculture. One could even argue that it is synthetic fertilizers that have allowed human populations to reach their current levels thus increasing the level of production of pollutants, driving the destruction of habitats and accelerating global warming. Even with intensive agriculture, we only delay the inevitable day when hungry mouths exceed the food supply and we must either succeed in controlling population growth or face mass starvation.

Answer: He personally orchestrated a poison gas attack on entrenched Allied troops.

Fritz Haber was anything but a passive participant in Germany's use of chemical weapons in World War I. Haber argued stridently for their use, worked tirelessly for their development and, ultimately, personally supervised the first chemical weapons attack in the history of warfare. He even persuaded the reluctant Otto Hahn to disregard his moral reservations and participate in his projects.

In 1899 and 1907 Germany had signed the Hague Conventions that forbade "all projectiles whose sole object is the diffusion of asphyxiating or deleterious gases". However, in 1915, Haber personally orchestrated an attack that dispensed with the matter of projectiles. Along a four-mile front, special troops under the command of Haber, placed cylinders containing 150 tons of chlorine gas. On April 22, the wind was right and the gas was released and those Allied soldiers who were not asphyxiated were driven from their trenches where they became easy targets. Future Nobel laureate Max Born refused to take part in Haber's attack. His horrified wife Clara, who had always opposed her husband's war research, committed suicide soon after the attack. Otto Hahn, a nuclear chemist who first produced nuclear fission, later regretted his involvement in Haber's research and activities.

Answer: That he should receive the Nobel Prize for chemistry

Although initially sought as a war criminal following World War I, Haber was never arrested and returned to Germany to continue his research. In 1918 he received the Nobel Prize in chemistry for his pioneering research in the production of ammonia from atmospheric nitrogen.

Answer: To pay off the German war debt

Although never a Nazi, Haber was an extreme German nationalist. His process to extract gold from seawater did not fail, but his estimates of the amount of gold that seawater contained were highly optimistic. The amount of gold produced was insignificant.

Answer: True

During the war Fritz Haber was tireless and dedicated in his research for better chemical warfare agents. Realizing the potential effectiveness of phosgene, Haber and his scientists conducted some of the experiments on themselves! But even after the war, Haber remained active in war research until 1933.

In violation of the Treaty of Versailles, he volunteered to continue producing poison gas at a secret factory near Wittenberg. Under orders from Haber, German scientists assisted in the construction of a Spanish factory where poison gas was produced for use against Moroccan rebels.

Answer: Jewish race laws.

To Haber's credit, the firing of Jewish workers at his institute prompted Haber's own resignation. However, he himself was the subject of suspicion despite his years of dedicated, patriotic service to his country. Despite his earlier conversion to Christianity, Nazi contemporaries referred him to as "that Jew Haber". Rejected by his homeland, he immigrated to England and held a position at Cambridge University. He died in 1934.

The life and legacy of Fritz Haber are beset with irony. His great discovery now feeds two billion people but has produced countless tons of explosives, including the "fertilizer" used in the 1996 Oklahoma City bombing. Although a dedicated German patriot, his homeland ultimately rejected him for the Jewish heritage he himself had repudiated as an ambitious young man. Even the feeding of humanity is sullied by the burden of pollution that is the inevitable consequence of widespread, intensive agriculture. The importance of this man and his innovative process are beyond question. The question is: are they both also beyond redemption?