Master Mind: The Rise and Fall of Fritz Haber, the Nobel Laureate Who Launched the Age of Chemical Warfare

Book Description

FRITZ HABER -- a Nobel laureate in chemistry, a friend of Albert Einstein, a German Jew and World War I hero -- may be the most important scientist you have never heard of. The Haber-Bosch process, which he invented at the turn of the twentieth century, revolutionized agriculture by converting nitrogen to fertilizer in quantities massive enough to feed the world. The invention has become an essential pillar for life on earth; some two billion people on our planet could not survive without it. Yet this same process supplied the German military with explosives during World War I, and Haber orchestrated Germany's use of an entirely new weapon -- poison gas. Eventually, Haber's efforts led to Zyklon B, the gas later used to kill millions -- including Haber's own relatives -- in Nazi concentration camps.

Haber is the patron saint of guns and butter, a scientist whose discoveries transformed the way we produce food and fight wars. His legacy is filled with contradictions, as was his personality. For some, he was a benefactor of humanity and devoted friend. For others, he was a war criminal, possessed by raw ambition. An intellectual gunslinger, enamored of technical progress and driven by patriotic devotion to Germany, he was instrumental in the scientific work that inadvertently supported the Nazi cause; a Jew and a German patriot, he was at once an enabler of the Nazi regime and its victim.

Master Mind is a thought-provoking biography of this controversial scientist, a modern Faust who personifies the paradox of science, its ability to create and to destroy. It offers a complete chronicle of his tumultuous and ultimately tragic life, from his childhood and rise to prominence in the heady days of the German Empire to his disgrace and exile at the hands of the Nazis; from early decades as the hero who eliminated the threat of starvation to his lingering legacy as a villain whose work led to the demise of millions.

Customer Reviews:

Barely known Giant that has Shaped the Modern World .......2007-10-09

It is often said the four people who had the most effect on the twentieth century were Einstein, Marx, Freud, and Darwin. Fritz Haber has to be close to number five.
Mankind's food production, yield per acre, has always been limited to the amount of nitrogen that becomes "fixed" into the soil as nitrates. Historically crops were rotated; fields were alternately planted with nitrogen fixing plants to improve yields. In 1909, Fritz Haber's invention showed that man could fix nitrogen, and when teamed up with Carl Bosch, the process could yield ammonia on an industrial scale. Large quantities of nitrogen fertlizer and gunpowder was the result. Thus German manufacture of gunpowder extended Germany's resistance in World War I for years because of this crucial process.
The Author shows the sad irony of war, ideology, and hate. Fritz Haber, a German Jew converted to Christianity to better blend in with the higher echelons of German industrialists as he became very wealthy. He Invented various gases used in gas attacks and one insecticide gas called Zyklon-B, which would be used in the death camps for the extermination of in-mates years later.
A fun loving gregarious Nobel Prize winning industrialist that was a failure as a father and husband, also misread the significance of the Nazis coming to power in Germany. He could not comprehend being robbed on his possessions, business agreements, and professional positions and finally fleeing to Switzerland where he died a broken man in 1934. The book is well written and researched. The last few chapters after Haber's death are a nice touch to the book, It traces Fritz Haber's family after the war and some of the Haber-Bosch machinery used in World War I then again in WWII and finally to help the East German Government make ends meet as late as the 1980's.

This in not just a good book, it is a Great Book!.......2007-02-19

The world would be a different place were it not for Fritz Haber. It is a must read for anyone that would like to get a feeling of what Germany and the pre-WWI world was like. We may not have had a WWI and consequently a WWII without great men like Alfred Nobel and Fritz Haber, and yet great scientists cure diseases in the pursuit of Nobel approval and the world eats by the grace of Fritz Haber.

sloppy history.......2007-02-04

Daniel Charles, otherwise a reporter with NPR, has written this relatively short biography of Fritz Haber, which I found to be a disappointment. Fritz Haber was by all accounts an extraordinary chemist, a Nobel Laureate, a German patriot, and a tragic figure in twentieth-century Germany's tragic history.

One of Haber's greatest technical accomplishments was to devise a way of extracting nitrogen from the air, without which Germany would have folded within 6 months of entering the First World War for lack of gunpowder, though one wonders if Haber, Germany, and Europe wouldn't have fared better without his invention. On the other hand, today this invention allows more than a billion people have food to eat thanks to fertilizer made with the same method.

This biography was a disappointment; some of the facts he offers are demonstrably incorrect, some of the facts he offers are, to be polite, wildly exaggerated, and informed voices that strongly dispute the opinions he cites go unmentioned.

To wit: Charles writes that Lunge had a position, and Haber was offered a position at the University of Zurich. These positions were at Zurich's Polytechnic, a totally different institution and arguably the finest Polytech in the German-speaking world.

- Charles writes that "Haber was a founder of the military-industrial complex." This is amazing as the Krupp Steel Works, which made Germany's artillery, had for years been so important to Germany that the Kaiser himself busied himself with finding a suitable husband for Bertha Krupp.

- Charles writes: "John Dewey's prophecy of 1918 has been proven correct; the marriage of science and military power has endured. And its spiritual heritage leads back to Dahlem," (where Haber had his lab.) He wrote this more than two millenia after Archimedes, the precocious Greek physicist and mathematician, invented ingenious weapons with which his fellow Syracusans fended off the Romans during the Second Punic War...

- Charles quotes a source that "apparently it was a common view among scientists at Haber's Institute" that his wife, committed suicide to protest his work developing chemical weapons, but omits to mention that one of Haber's other biographers, the son of friend of Haber's, has written that there were those who claim that her suicide was a political statement, but that the family rejects these theories as a politically convenient myths. Haber's son deemed this other biography as the best one yet. Charles himself writes that the family had a history of suicides and that Clara Haber had had serious emotional problems for a long time. Incidentally, the symptoms of her emotional problems are indistinguishable from those of a heavy metal intoxication; Clara Haber's doctoral thesis was on her experimental work with heavy metals and their salts. Hmmm.

I believe that basic human decency would have obliged Charles to either go into meaningful detail on all the relevant facts and opinions surrounding Clara Haber and her tragic death, or else leave her to her well-deserved rest. Instead, you can read the book and conclude that Charles insinuates that Haber drove his wife to her death. This is beyond tacky, and the reason I give this book one star, and not two.

Make no mistake about it, Fritz Haber was a brilliant scientist, whose life is profoundly interesting. The one motif in Haber's life that Charles largely does justice, and which is moving, is Haber's tragic quest to assimilate himself into German society, only to suffer persecution as a Jew at the hands of the parvenu filth that came to misgovern Germany.

The Moral Dilemma.......2006-03-01

I think the real dilemma in science comes when we insert "ego" in the place of morality and use the argument that "If I don't, then someone else will." But what we don't realize is that when we "do"...we ARE that someone else!! I guess in the end we can't be responsible for someone else's misuse of technology...can we?

I'm not done reading the book but so far it's awesome!

A Look at the Scientific Mind.......2005-11-15

The mind of a scientist is a curious thing. A scientist is obviously driven by curiosity but what sparks that curiosity and what puts some scientific minds above others is a problem. The lives of Newton and Einstein have picked over for clues but, often, more clarity can be seen in the lives of the brilliant, if lesser, scientific minds. Fritz Haber is such an example.

Haber was the inventor of the process by which nitrogen can be produced on an industrial scale. This may not seem important but it is the process by which nitrogen fertilizers were invented, allowing food production on a scale never before seen. It is estimated that nearly a third of the current population of the earth could not be supported without the food production allowed by these fertilizers, for which Haber was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1918.

Newton & Einstein have a genius that stands alone but what similarities do we see with Haber, who happened to be a good friend of Einstein's? From what this book describes, it seems to be mainly the intense focus, concentration and hard work that these men brought to bear on problems. A touch of genius doesn't hurt, but without hard work, it amounts to nothing and, as Haber's life demonstrates, hard work and dedication can take you a long way.

So, with the great importance of his work, why is Haber basically unknown? Well, Haber's focus and hard work led him to ignore the morality of some of the implications of his work. In particular, his work with nitrogen contributed greatly to Germany's military might during World War I and World War II, nitrogen being the basic ingredient of explosives. The irony of this is that, despite his work for Germany's greatness in the early twentieth century, his Jewish heritage (even though he practiced Christianity for most of his adult life) made him anathema in Germany upon the rise of the Nazis. At his death in 1934, he was rejected--by the world because of his support of Germany and by Germany because of his Jewishness.

If the prose here is a little bland and somewhat less than penetrating in spots, Mr. Charles does offer us a portrait of the scientist as a blind seeker. For knowledge, yes, but also for recognition of his accomplishments in the public sphere. Perhaps this is where the life of Haber and Einstein most significantly diverge and makes us think Haber the lesser man. In any case, it is a life worth investigating for both its triumphs and its warnings.

Enriching the Earth: Fritz Haber, Carl Bosch, and the Transformation of World Food Production

Average customer rating:

Nitrogen in agriculture: from composting and guano to Haber-Bosch and artificial fertilizers
Too many statistics, not enough science and history
Nitrogen in Agriculture -- The Haber-Bosch Process

Enriching the Earth: Fritz Haber, Carl Bosch, and the Transformation of World Food Production
Vaclav Smil
Manufacturer: The MIT Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Politics | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Environmental Science | Earth Sciences | Science | Subjects | Books

Soil Science | Agricultural Sciences | Science | Subjects | Books

General | Agricultural Sciences | Science | Subjects | Books

General | History & Philosophy | Science | Subjects | Books

History of Technology | Technology | Science | Subjects | Books

General | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

Look Inside Outdoors & Nature Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 0262693135

Book Description

The industrial synthesis of ammonia from nitrogen and hydrogen has been of greater fundamental importance to the modern world than the invention of the airplane, nuclear energy, space flight, or television. The expansion of the world's population from 1.6 billion people in 1900 to today's six billion would not have been possible without the synthesis of ammonia.

In Enriching the Earth, Vaclav Smil begins with a discussion of nitrogen's unique status in the biosphere, its role in crop production, and traditional means of supplying the nutrient. He then looks at various attempts to expand natural nitrogen flows through mineral and synthetic fertilizers. The core of the book is a detailed narrative of the discovery of ammonia synthesis by Fritz Haber -- a discovery scientists had sought for over one hundred years -- and its commercialization by Carl Bosch and the chemical company BASF. Smil also examines the emergence of the large-scale nitrogen fertilizer industry and analyzes the extent of global dependence on the Haber-Bosch process and its biospheric consequences. Finally, it looks at the role of nitrogen in civilization and, in a sad coda, describes the lives of Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch after the discovery of ammonia synthesis.

Customer Reviews:

Nitrogen in agriculture: from composting and guano to Haber-Bosch and artificial fertilizers.......2007-03-26

First of all, this is not a book that most people would take to the beach to read, but rather a fairly scientific book on the use of nitrogen in agriculture, as befits a publication of MIT Press.

Smil initially set out to write a biography of Fritz Haber, but found that Haber's contribution to agriculture was so much more complicated than he could fit into a biography. Instead, he wrote a history of nitrogen supplements in agriculture. The amount of nitrogen is by far the main determinant of crop yield; within common sense limits, a crop's yield is more or less linearly dependent on how much nitrogen a farmer spreads on his fields. In the 1910s, Fritz Haber and Bosch, devised a way to extract nitrogen from the air; until then farmers had been dependent on compost and the shipments of guano (bird dung) from South America to get more nitrogen onto their fields. The results include a huge increase in crop yields, a huge decrease in the percentage of the population that must toil the fields, a huge increase in literacy and much more.

Smil's book is quite interesting to anyone interested by science; if you have a teen that you are trying to interest in science, this is a book you could send his way. If you're averse to the occasional number, equation, graph, or scientific nomenclature, you're best off avoiding this book. These caveats stipulated, I highly recommend this book.

Too many statistics, not enough science and history.......2001-07-06

The Haber process is arguably the most significant development of the 20th century, yet it remains virtually unknown to the general public. There are a few chapters on the history and chemistry of this vital process, and they are reasonably well written. But the vast majority of the book is an endless litany of statistics, completely devoid of narrative structure. For example:

"In the United Kingdom more than half of all nitrogen fertilizer has been applied to grasslands. A Royal Society study found that in the late 1970s average applications on pastures surpassed the inputs to arable land (172 vs. 135 kg N/ha), and that synthetic compounds accounted for 57-63% of all inputs. The overall use of fertilizer nitrogen in the United Kingdom rose by almost 50% between the late 1970s and the mid 1980s, but it declined afterwards, and its average during the late 1990s has been only about 20% higher than a generation earlier, which means that the synthetic fertilizers supply between 65 and 70% of all nitrogen inputs. But high-yielding winter wheat -- the 1998 mean was 7.97 t/ha -- still receives more than 180 kg N/ha, double the amount applied in 1970 when the yield was around 4 t/ha, and the secular correlation between the rising applications of inorganic nitrogen and rising harvests is obvious (fig. 7.8)."

Now imagine 300 more pages of text just like that, and you get the idea. There is no *story* here, just data. It's a shame, because there is definitely a story to be told.

The material on the Haber process itself is better, but not great. In particular, the author can't seem to choose the level of the audience: descriptions of chemistry alternate between being too simplistic and assuming too much. Details essential to understanding often seemed to be missing, while details of no apparent relevance are in abundance. I don't really care whether the process takes place under 137 vs. 152 atmospheres; but I do care *why* the pressure is so critical, which is never explained.

I really wanted to like this book more than I did. There *is* plenty of good material here, but you have to sort through a lot of empty statistics to get it, and the omission of key pieces of scientific explanation makes for a painfully frustrating read.

Nitrogen in Agriculture -- The Haber-Bosch Process.......2001-06-19

This is a great book for any one interested in the way the Haber-Bosch process of making Nitrogen fertilizer changed the world. Enriching the Earth provides in depth information on the history that led up to the discovery of the process of using N2 and H2 to make NH3. It also contains up to date information on the effects that all of this new nitrogen has on the earth.

The book can get a little technical at times, with chemical formulas and schematics of the instruments. While I found this information useful, some people might find it overwhelming. If you skip over the techincal parts, the book is very well written for the average person.

These little known scientists really changed the world as we know it. When you think about it, what has Einstein done for you lately? These guys put food on the table.

Average customer rating:

an excellent biography

Great book on a complex man

Fritz Haber: Chemist, Nobel Laureate, German, Jew: A Biography
Dietrich Stoltzenberg
Manufacturer: Chemical Heritage Foundation
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books
General | Historical | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books
Scientists | Professionals & Academics | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books
General & Reference | Chemistry | Science | Subjects | Books
General & Reference | Chemistry | Professional Science | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books
General | Germany | Europe | History | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

Master Mind : The Rise and Fall of Fritz Haber, the Nobel Laureate Who Launched the Age of Chemical Warfare

Enriching the Earth: Fritz Haber, Carl Bosch, and the Transformation of World Food Production

American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer

The God Delusion

ASIN: 0941901246
Release Date: 2005-06-01

Product Description

This long-awaited biography of Fritz Haber, now abridged by the author and translated into English, illuminates the life of one of the most gifted yet controversial figures of the 20th century. Haber was a pioneer in electrochemistry and thermodynamics and won the Nobel Prize for his synthesis of ammonia, a process essential for both fertilizer and explosives. His dedication to work spurred his efforts to increase support for scientific study in Germany; yet it also helped cause the breakdown of his two marriages. His ardent patriotism led him to develop chemical weapons for World War I and to try to extract gold from seawater, to help pay for Germany's huge war reparations. Yet Haber, a Jew by birth, was exiled from his homeland in 1933 by the Nazi party and died shortly after.

Customer Reviews:

an excellent biography.......2006-10-04

Fritz Haber was one of the great chemists. This biography, written by the son of one of his co-workers is magnificent in that it is thorough, informative, extremely well-researched, replete with references to additional literature.

Well worth reading by anyone interested by the First World War - the allies went into the war thinking that if worst came to worst, Germany would run out of nitrates, which were then the only known source for the nitrogen needed to make gunpowder, and ergo gunpowder, and be forced to surrender. Little did they reckon with Fritz Haber's genius - he devised a method to extract nitrogen out of the air - and the war tragically continued. Stoltzenberg devotes some thought to what sense this accomplishment made, but other authors may have devoted more pages to this subject. This book will appeal to any reader fascinated by German history, or by the history of chemistry.

Great book on a complex man.......2004-04-27

This biography illuminates the life of one of the most gifted yet controversial figures of the 20th century. Haber was a pioneer in electrochemistry and thermodynamics and won the Nobel Prize for his synthesis of ammonia, a process essential for both fertilizer and explosives. Haber's work has helped feed billions of people, but he is often remembered for his role in the poison gas attacks of World War I. Despite his ardent patriotism, Haber, a jew by birth, was exiled from his homeland in 1933 by the Nazi party.

Die elektrolytischen Prozesse der organischen Chemie.

Average customer rating:

Die elektrolytischen Prozesse der organischen Chemie.
Fritz Haber
Manufacturer: See notes
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000UWOQ80

Average customer rating:

Fritz Haber - an excellent biography

Fritz Haber
D. Stolzenberg
Manufacturer: Wiley-VCH
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Jewish | Ethnic & National | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

German | Foreign Language Nonfiction | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

History | German | Foreign Language Books | Specialty Stores | Books

Nonfiction | German | Foreign Language Books | Specialty Stores | Books

Professional & Technical | German | Foreign Language Books | Specialty Stores | Books

All German Books | German | Foreign Language Books | Specialty Stores | Books
ASIN: 3527292063

Customer Reviews:

Fritz Haber - an excellent biography.......2000-08-15

Who was Fritz Haber? Why write, read, or review a book about him?

Fritz Haber was one of the most important, and now almost unknown, scientists of the early 20th Century - and one of the most ambivalent of all German Jews. Haber discovered a process for fixing atmospheric nitrogen, thus making possible the development of artificial fertilizers - and freeing Germany from dependence on imported nitrate for the production of gunpowder. He was the true father of the Green Revolution, "the man who brought bread from the air" - and the man who almost won the first World War single-handedly for Germany, for without gunpowder production from nitrogren fixation, Germany, cut off from nitrate imports, could not have stayed in the first World War, or begun the second - only to be dismissed by the Nazis and die in exile in Switzerland. But this is not why Haber's name is not spoken. It was Fritz Haber,patriotic German Jew, who created poison gas. And that is why Haber has been not so much overlooked, as deliberately ignored.

Stoltzenberg's book therefore fills a substantial gap. This review is written from the German text, which is clear and straightforward with few rhetorical flourishes, although highly technical in places. Those looking for pop psychoanalysis or gruesome battlefield scenes will be disappointed, as the tone is restrained and understated throughout. Stoltzenberg has unusual advantages in handling this difficult subject. He is a professional chemist himself, the son of a chemist who was a close associate of Haber during and after WWI, had access to material collected for a biography in the 1950s but unwritten at that time, and supplemented that with years of research in government and private archives. This massive book is meticulously documented, almost entirely from contemporary sources, most never published, and will surely be the standard biography.

Apologists for Haber's close friend, Albert Einstein, have excused his work on the atomic bomb on the grounds that he was really an abstract scientist, who didn't understand what he was doing, and that anyway he was a pacifist who acted only because of the Holocaust. Stoltzenberg makes it clear that these excuses don't apply to Haber. Haber was an intensely patriotic German. He deliberately invented poison gas (or rather a whole family of gases). He persuaded the government into its use, over the initial opposition of the army; was present at the first gas attack at Ypres (and always felt afterwards that if the army had believed him, and had been ready to follow up with a full-scale attack through the broken French and British lines, the war could have been won at that point - and at least a few historians have agreed with him). He organized the entire system of gas research, production, and supply, including the development and production of gas masks, and was present at numerous other attacks on both the western and eastern fronts. Stoltzenberg describes him as "besessen" -obsessed. He continued gas research secretly after the war, passing off the post-war development of Zyklon under the noses of the Allied Control Commission as a pesticide. And he never apologized or felt that he had acted wrongly.

However, the book is not limited to Haber's wartime activities. Stoltzenberg also discusses in equal detail the rest of Haber's life. These subjects include: his pre-war years in Karlsruhe, according to the author, the happiest and most successful of his life, and the development of the nitrogen fixation process, including the complicated negotiations between the university, industry, and government; the equally complicated negotiations over Haber's move to Berlin, and the creation of an entirely new division of the Kaiser Wilhelm (now Max Planck)Institute, lavishly financed and built to Haber's specifications; the years spent rebuilding the Institute after the war; the controversial award of the Nobel Prize; his failed search for gold in sea water; and his personal life. As might be expected of a man who was effectively married to his work, Haber's two marriages were both failures; his first wife shot herself and his second ended in divorce. His closest relationships were with his colleagues, and here he shone, being regarded with tremendous respect and affection. Haber was never a solitary genius, but a hands-on and hugely effective team leader, who could organize and inspire outstanding work in the most difficult circumstances.

The dismissal of Jews by the Nazis was a particularly devastating blow to Haber, a man utterly indifferent to religion, but who had always felt himself as, and been regarded by the German government as, an intense patriot. However, the story that Hitler personally called Haber into his office and fired him was apparently a journalistic fantasy; according to Stoltzenberg, it was Max Planck who demanded a personal interview with Hitler in order to plead for his Jewish colleagues, and who personally endured Hitler's irrational ranting. The experience was not repeated. Haber left for England, but was not especially happy. He died in Switzerland, and was buried there. Stoltzenberg accepts the official view that Haber, having been ill for years, not least due to his own constant exposure to poisonous gases, died, in the presence of his son and his own doctor, of a heart attack - or, of a broken heart.

Customer Reviews:

Full of information; scientific, personal, and political........1998-10-08

Far too little is available in English on the life of a man whose achievements now help feed half of all people on Earth. However, fertilizers were the last thing on Haber's mind when he set out to do his most famous and important work. Haber's career and eventual personal tragedy are full of ironies - a patriotic German forced out by Hitler, a developer of weapons whose discoveries were to prolong a war that destroyed his country, but later were to fuel the Green Revolution, a man of great talent, generosity, and pettiness, a lover of women whose marriages ended in suicide and divorce. Goran lets the story tell itself without imposing his own judgments, and indeed the only major criticism I would make of this book is the tendency to pile together uncritically facts and anecdotes, while the central character remains elusive. Goran's work would appear to have served as a source for Rhodes (Making of the Atomic Bomb), unless both Rhodes and Goran used the same source. Goran's work clearly deserves to be better known, and the fact that this 30-year-old volume has not been supereded in the Amazon catalog poses a clear challenge to historians and biographers.

Books:

Books Index

Books Home

Recommended Books