Good Chemist, Bad Chemist: The Fritz Haber Story

Fritz Haber developed the process that could turn atmospheric nitrogen into fertilizer

If you ate three meals today, then you owe at least a small debt of gratitude to Fritz Haber. This German patriot developed the process that could turn atmospheric nitrogen into fertilizer. Without it, the Earth wouldn’t be able to support its current population of more than 6 billion — not even half.

At the end of the 19th century, experts predicted worldwide famine in the 20th century — before world population reached two billion. Today, most famines are caused by politics, by leaders of impoverished countries who refuse to accept food or who steal it when it is delivered. The world can grow enough food to feed everyone and keep several rich countries obsessed with problems of too much food rather than too little.

Nitrogen compounds are essential to fertilizer and equally important in making explosives. In 1914, at the beginning of World War I, Haber’s beloved Germany was cut off from supplies of nitrogen for making gunpowder and growing food. Without ammonia compounds, the war could have ended quickly — the Germans would have run out of food and ammunition. Haber’s invention fed the German war machine until the war’s end in 1918, after four years of fighting and millions of deaths and injuries.

Although Haber’s work keeps billions well fed, it also played a large part in making most of the world fearful of the dark side of technology and its consequences. Haber developed and championed chemical warfare for the German Army and personally supervised its first use. On April 22, 1915, Haber was on the German front lines in Belgium directing the first gas attack in military history. About 150 tons of chlorine blew across the fields of Flanders, Belgium, spreading panic and death among the Allied soldiers opposing the German forces.

Haber not only developed chemical weaponry, he insisted on its use. He said, “To win the war, wage chemical warfare with conviction.” Shortly, after superintending this new and vile chapter in warfare, Haber returned to Berlin feeling vindicated that his invention had succeeded. His wife, also a chemist, shot herself days after his return. No note or message marked her suicide, so the actual reason will never be known. Soon after, Haber’s own health began to decline, in part from the stress of developing chemical weapons quickly.

After Germany was defeated, Haber remained a loyal patriot. He tried and failed to develop a process for extracting gold from seawater, in part to pay Germany’s huge war reparations debt. When the Nazis came to power in 1933, Haber, a Jew by birth, was forced to leave Germany because of Nazi race laws. He died the following year, several years before the Nazis would slaughter millions, using poison gas among other methods, and America would use Haber’s process to grow the food and make the gunpowder that would eventually lead to the defeat of Nazi Germany.

As with other developments that helped the Allies win the war (CEP, Apr. 2003, p. 80), chemical engineers played critical parts in the drama. In the 1920s, two Alsatian engineers arrived in England with complete plans for a Haber process plant. With the secret revealed, the U.S. and U.K. were able to develop ammonia plants and begin large-scale production. When World War II began, production could be easily scaled up to support the war effort.

Admire him, despise him, or both — Fritz Haber exemplifies the best and the worst that a brilliant person can accomplish in the life of science. His story is compelling, surprising, and thoroughly modern in its implications. The same technology can save lives and take lives — both heal and kill. The Haber process prolonged a horrible war and yet is the reason billions of people around the world eat every day. The legacy of Fritz Haber, for good and for ill, affects the life of everyone in the chemical industry and the molecular sciences.

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This article was originally published under the title "We're History" in the February 2004 edition of Chemical Engineering Progress magazine. “We’re History” is prepared by the Chemical Heritage Foundation. CHF published a biography titled, “Fritz Haber: Chemist, Nobel Laureate, German, and Jew,” by Dietrich Stoltzenburg. The book was published in German in 1995 to critical acclaim, including this comment from a review in Nature: “Stoltzenburg has written a fine biography of this deeply flawed individual.” The book from CHF Press is the first English Translation. To order, contact Greg November, 215-925-2222 x222 or booksales@chemheritage.org.