FRITZ HABER, The Chemist of Life and Death There is probably no ...

FRITZ HABER,
The Chemist of Life and Death
There is probably no other scientist in history who is celebrated and at the same
time vilified for his scientific work. His discovery of the catalytic process to generate
ammonia from hydrogen and nitrogen, the Haber-Bosch process, simplified the
production of fertilizer and has saved millions from starvation. It has been said that
almost half of the earth’s population can credit him with their existence. He was
the recipient of the 1918 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for that work. And yet, as a dedicated
German patriot during the First World War, he was the mastermind behind the development
and implementation of poison gases by the German military and thus is considered the father
of modern chemical warfare. Partially as a result of her relegation to a subservient role as a
housewife as well as his military activities and in particular, his use of chemical weapons, his
wife Clara, a Ph.D. chemist herself, committed suicide in 1915. The day after her death, he
returned to his military duties and organized a gas attack against the Russians.
Haber was a Jew who had converted to Christianity to assimilate, but the rise of the
Nazi party and the election of Adolf Hitler in 1933, whose anti-Semitism was racist rather than
religious in nature, eventually led to his resignation as director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute
for Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry (renamed the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max
Planck Society in 1953) and emigration to England.
Perhaps the most ironic aspect of Haber’s work was his involvement in the development
of Zyklon A, a liquid pesticide containing methyl cyanoformate that released hydrogen cyanide
on contact with water. Further development of this pesticide was Zyklon B, a combination of
hydrocyanic acid and diatomaceous earth that was used to kill millions of Jews in Auschwitz-
Birkenau, undoubtedly including some of his relatives.
He was born on December 9, 1868 in Breslau, Germany. From 1886 until 1891 he
studied chemistry at the University of Heidelberg, at the University of Berlin, and at the
Technical School at Charlottenburg. After completing his University studies, he voluntarily
worked in his father's chemical business becoming interested in chemical technology and also
worked at the Institute of Technology at Zurich. He then finally decided to take up a scientific
career and went for one and a half years to work with Ludwig Knorr at Jena, publishing with
him a joint paper on diacetosuccinic ester. Still uncertain whether to devote himself to
chemistry or physics, he was offered in 1894 and accepted an assistantship at Karlsruhe
Institute of Chemical Technology where he was taught and did research. He was made an
associate professor in 1898. In 1911, he became the Director of the Institute for Physical and
Electrochemistry at Berlin-Dahlem. He went to England in 1933,
He was married to Clara Immerwahr and Charlotte Nathan, and they had three children,
Eva, Herman, and Ludwig Fritz. He died in 1934 at the age of 65 from heart failure.

References:
Fritz Haber: Jewish chemist whose work led to Zyklon B, by Chris Bowlby, BBC Radio,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-13015210 and the associated BBC broadcast, The Chemist
of Life and Death (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01062gy)
Master Mind: The Rise and Fall of Fritz Haber, the Nobel Laureate Who Launched the Age of
Chemical Warfare, Daniel Charles, Harper Collins, NY, 2005 (Kindle edition, 2009)
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1918/haber.html
© 2011, Michael Epstein and Leopold May