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The Alchemy of Air: A Jewish Genius, a Doomed Tycoon, and the Scientific Discovery That Fed the World but Fueled the Rise of Hitler
A sweeping history of tragic genius, cutting-edge science, and the discovery that changed billions of lives—including your own.
At the dawn of the twentieth century, humanity was facing global disaster. Mass starvation, long predicted for the fast-growing population, was about to become a reality. A call went out to the world’s scientists to find a solution.
This is the story of the two enormously gifted, fatally flawed men who found the brilliant, self-important Fritz Haber and the reclusive, alcoholic Carl Bosch. Together they discovered a way to make bread out of air, built city-sized factories, controlled world markets, and saved millions of lives. Their invention continues to feed us today; without it, more than two billion people would starve.
But their epochal triumph came at a price we are still paying. The Haber-Bosch process was also used to make the gunpowder and high explosives that killed millions during the two world wars. Both men were vilified during their lives; both, disillusioned and disgraced, died tragically. Today we face the other unintended consequences of their discovery—massive nitrogen pollution and a growing pandemic of obesity.
The Alchemy of Air is the extraordinary, previously untold story of two master scientists who saved the world only to lose everything and of the unforseen results of a discovery that continues to shape our lives in the most fundamental and dramatic of ways.
At the dawn of the twentieth century, humanity was facing global disaster. Mass starvation, long predicted for the fast-growing population, was about to become a reality. A call went out to the world’s scientists to find a solution.
This is the story of the two enormously gifted, fatally flawed men who found the brilliant, self-important Fritz Haber and the reclusive, alcoholic Carl Bosch. Together they discovered a way to make bread out of air, built city-sized factories, controlled world markets, and saved millions of lives. Their invention continues to feed us today; without it, more than two billion people would starve.
But their epochal triumph came at a price we are still paying. The Haber-Bosch process was also used to make the gunpowder and high explosives that killed millions during the two world wars. Both men were vilified during their lives; both, disillusioned and disgraced, died tragically. Today we face the other unintended consequences of their discovery—massive nitrogen pollution and a growing pandemic of obesity.
The Alchemy of Air is the extraordinary, previously untold story of two master scientists who saved the world only to lose everything and of the unforseen results of a discovery that continues to shape our lives in the most fundamental and dramatic of ways.
336 pages, Hardcover
First published September 9, 2008
About the author
Thomas Hager
19 books297 followersHow science and technology change our lives. I believe in facts.
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June 8, 2008
The Alchemy of Air is brilliant science writing, which means that it reads more like a bracing adventure story than a science lecture.
At the turn of the 20th century, an impending crisis faces the world: mass starvation. The earth simply can't yield enough food to keep up. The only men that can save the world are chemists tasked with the impossible: distilling nitrogen from the air.
Thomas Hager's writing pulses with intrigue and sweeps us away into a cast of characters that includes manure tycoons, South American swashbucklers, and German power-chemists. And it takes you into the most unexpected settings: Chilean guana fields and city-sized factories, to name a couple.
It's stunning to think that this story was always right in front of our noses, but Alchemy of Air demonstrates how a great writer can reveal a hidden world in our midst. What's just as impressive is that you end up absorbing a perplexing amount of science (particularly chemistry) without even realizing it. Alchemy of Air is a dazzling feat of story telling--put it on your must-read list.
At the turn of the 20th century, an impending crisis faces the world: mass starvation. The earth simply can't yield enough food to keep up. The only men that can save the world are chemists tasked with the impossible: distilling nitrogen from the air.
Thomas Hager's writing pulses with intrigue and sweeps us away into a cast of characters that includes manure tycoons, South American swashbucklers, and German power-chemists. And it takes you into the most unexpected settings: Chilean guana fields and city-sized factories, to name a couple.
It's stunning to think that this story was always right in front of our noses, but Alchemy of Air demonstrates how a great writer can reveal a hidden world in our midst. What's just as impressive is that you end up absorbing a perplexing amount of science (particularly chemistry) without even realizing it. Alchemy of Air is a dazzling feat of story telling--put it on your must-read list.
November 30, 2017
Guano, though no saint, works many miracles.
So goes a local Peruvian proverb. Almost a haiku. It's how I like my wisdom served. Yes, thank you, I'll have a Malbec and an order of the Cryptic Guano, please.
Guano, or Birdpoop, as we call it here. There was a time when it was the most prized resource on the planet. Liquid gold. Well, sort of liquid. But golden enough that nations went to war over it. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
This is a brilliant book and I can't introduce it to you any better than the author himself:
This is the story of two men who invented a way to turn air into bread, built factories the size of small cities, made enormous fortunes, helped engineer the deaths of millions of people, and saved the lives of billions more.
Perhaps more impressive, the author explains all this in a page-turning way made understandable even to someone like me who barely escaped college biology. But I have grown some pretty nice tomatoes.
Farmers, even those with a casual 18'x 18' plot like me, have long known the value of crop rotation, select fall crops, and manure. And what is manure but nitrogen.* More nitrogen, better yield. But even with all those methods, fields became played out. Malthusian doomsayers did some rough math between food and people and predicted we were headed for mass starvation.
So, how to get more nitrogen to the crops. Well, there was naturally forming saltpeter. For example, in the mud flats of the Ganges River. That's why Britain decided it best to take over India.
But other countries had the same needs. Which is where birdpoop comes in. There were islands just off the west coast of South America that were covered in bird guano. Soon, mountains of the shit were being unloaded in European ports. The United States even passed legislation - The Guano Islands Act - which allowed any U.S. citizen to lay claim to any deserted island anywhere in the world and make it U.S. territory. Of course, in that great American tradition, islands were claimed that had no guano and were not deserted. Midway Island, Baker, Johnston, Howland and other islands and atolls were all acquired under the Guano Islands Act, which, by the way, is still in effect.
Eventually, after a few wars and such, the birdpoop was all gone. So, too, was the nitrate-rich mineral layer found in South America's Great Atacama Desert. Wars were fought here, too - The Nitrate Wars - and is the reason that Bolivia is now land-locked.**
Nitrogen, that essential element, is not only in mud flats, deserts and bird droppings***, it's also in the air. Nitrogen gas makes up 80% of the Earth's atmosphere. We breathe it in and out all day. The problem is, the nitrogen in the air is inert and can't be used to fertilize. It's like being on a boat in the ocean and still unable to get a drink of water.
So, taking a deep breath, this book is about the two men who managed to take the nitrogen from the air and make it usable. And make it usable they did.
Fritz Haber was able to turn nitrogen in the air into ammonia. Carl Bosch made it work at the industrial level. The world has plenty of food now thanks to these two men.****
It was Haber, though, who personally drifted a Chlorine fog over Allied troops in WWI. And it was Bosch who went on to manufacture synthetic gas and rubber, without which Hitler would have been out of business in eight months. Too, it was Haber, a Jew, whose research into chemical insecticides was further developed by other researchers into a poison gas called Zyklon B.
Also covered here, if rather quickly, is the deleterious effect of all that fertilizer on the environment. The true understanding of that remains inchoate.
I highly recommend this book.*****
_______________________________
*I love rhododendrons, but for years I thought rhododendrons didn't love me. Oh, I put all that acidy stuff around them but the leaves yellowed and browned and soon I was replacing a withered bush. I always had wood chips around the rhododendron beds, mushroom manure around the flower beds. Then I learned that in their first year, wood chips suck the nitrogen right out of the soil. Well, I planted a delphinium in an open spot in the rhododendron bed and it refused to grow. I moved it to the flower bed, away from the wood chips, and it immediately thrived. So, last year I did not put wood chips in the rhododendron beds, using the mushroom manure instead. And my rhodys are smiling.
**An interesting historical parallel popped up to me reading this part of the story. The nitrate fields in that desert were in parts of Peru, Chile and Bolivia. The richest section was located in Peru, but the Chileans were the better miners. So Peru let the Chileans in and they dominated the population in that area. Eventually, a misguided Peruvian dictator decided to raise taxes on the Chileans, who protested to Chile, which came in and kicked the Peruvian ass. Sound familiar to Hitler's pretext for coming to the aid of put-upon Germans in Czechoslovakia?
***There are posts on my deck which are usually covered white with birdshit by late spring. I'll let you know how my agricultural experiments go next year.
****Yes, there is still starvation, the author states, but because of war, natural disasters, politics, not because there isn't enough food.
*****A huge thank you to GR friend Tippy Jackson, an actual scientist, who recommended this book to me.
So goes a local Peruvian proverb. Almost a haiku. It's how I like my wisdom served. Yes, thank you, I'll have a Malbec and an order of the Cryptic Guano, please.
Guano, or Birdpoop, as we call it here. There was a time when it was the most prized resource on the planet. Liquid gold. Well, sort of liquid. But golden enough that nations went to war over it. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
This is a brilliant book and I can't introduce it to you any better than the author himself:
This is the story of two men who invented a way to turn air into bread, built factories the size of small cities, made enormous fortunes, helped engineer the deaths of millions of people, and saved the lives of billions more.
Perhaps more impressive, the author explains all this in a page-turning way made understandable even to someone like me who barely escaped college biology. But I have grown some pretty nice tomatoes.
Farmers, even those with a casual 18'x 18' plot like me, have long known the value of crop rotation, select fall crops, and manure. And what is manure but nitrogen.* More nitrogen, better yield. But even with all those methods, fields became played out. Malthusian doomsayers did some rough math between food and people and predicted we were headed for mass starvation.
So, how to get more nitrogen to the crops. Well, there was naturally forming saltpeter. For example, in the mud flats of the Ganges River. That's why Britain decided it best to take over India.
But other countries had the same needs. Which is where birdpoop comes in. There were islands just off the west coast of South America that were covered in bird guano. Soon, mountains of the shit were being unloaded in European ports. The United States even passed legislation - The Guano Islands Act - which allowed any U.S. citizen to lay claim to any deserted island anywhere in the world and make it U.S. territory. Of course, in that great American tradition, islands were claimed that had no guano and were not deserted. Midway Island, Baker, Johnston, Howland and other islands and atolls were all acquired under the Guano Islands Act, which, by the way, is still in effect.
Eventually, after a few wars and such, the birdpoop was all gone. So, too, was the nitrate-rich mineral layer found in South America's Great Atacama Desert. Wars were fought here, too - The Nitrate Wars - and is the reason that Bolivia is now land-locked.**
Nitrogen, that essential element, is not only in mud flats, deserts and bird droppings***, it's also in the air. Nitrogen gas makes up 80% of the Earth's atmosphere. We breathe it in and out all day. The problem is, the nitrogen in the air is inert and can't be used to fertilize. It's like being on a boat in the ocean and still unable to get a drink of water.
So, taking a deep breath, this book is about the two men who managed to take the nitrogen from the air and make it usable. And make it usable they did.
Fritz Haber was able to turn nitrogen in the air into ammonia. Carl Bosch made it work at the industrial level. The world has plenty of food now thanks to these two men.****
It was Haber, though, who personally drifted a Chlorine fog over Allied troops in WWI. And it was Bosch who went on to manufacture synthetic gas and rubber, without which Hitler would have been out of business in eight months. Too, it was Haber, a Jew, whose research into chemical insecticides was further developed by other researchers into a poison gas called Zyklon B.
Also covered here, if rather quickly, is the deleterious effect of all that fertilizer on the environment. The true understanding of that remains inchoate.
I highly recommend this book.*****
_______________________________
*I love rhododendrons, but for years I thought rhododendrons didn't love me. Oh, I put all that acidy stuff around them but the leaves yellowed and browned and soon I was replacing a withered bush. I always had wood chips around the rhododendron beds, mushroom manure around the flower beds. Then I learned that in their first year, wood chips suck the nitrogen right out of the soil. Well, I planted a delphinium in an open spot in the rhododendron bed and it refused to grow. I moved it to the flower bed, away from the wood chips, and it immediately thrived. So, last year I did not put wood chips in the rhododendron beds, using the mushroom manure instead. And my rhodys are smiling.
**An interesting historical parallel popped up to me reading this part of the story. The nitrate fields in that desert were in parts of Peru, Chile and Bolivia. The richest section was located in Peru, but the Chileans were the better miners. So Peru let the Chileans in and they dominated the population in that area. Eventually, a misguided Peruvian dictator decided to raise taxes on the Chileans, who protested to Chile, which came in and kicked the Peruvian ass. Sound familiar to Hitler's pretext for coming to the aid of put-upon Germans in Czechoslovakia?
***There are posts on my deck which are usually covered white with birdshit by late spring. I'll let you know how my agricultural experiments go next year.
****Yes, there is still starvation, the author states, but because of war, natural disasters, politics, not because there isn't enough food.
*****A huge thank you to GR friend Tippy Jackson, an actual scientist, who recommended this book to me.
August 10, 2016
It's surprising how interesting a book about fertilizer can be. More specifically, this book tells the story of the Haber-Bosch process used to manufacture synthetic nitrogen fertilizer by turning atmospheric nitrogen into a form that can be used by plant life. If you believe this to be not very important consider this; nearly 80% of the nitrogen found inside your body—and every other living body in the world—originated from the Haber-Bosch process. It's true, from half to one third of the people alive today simply wouldn't be here if it weren't for synthetic fertilizers because there wouldn't be enough food—even if everybody ate low on the food chain (i.e no meat).
But there's another side to the Haber-Bosch process. It allowed World War I to last about two years longer than it would have otherwise because it can also be used to make gun powder and explosives. Germany had no access to the raw materials needed to make more explosives without the Haber-Bosch process and without it they simply would have exhausted their supplies. Then later in World War II technologies similar to the Haber-Bosch process allowed Germany to make gasoline from coal. Since Germany had limited access to alternative sources it's hard to imagine how they could have fueled their mechanized army otherwise.
This book also contains an interesting human interest story about the chemist Fritz Haber and engineer Carl Bosch as their careers first received international praise and recognition only to die later as broken men. Fritz Haber was awarded the Nobel prize in 1918 for development of the chemical process, and Carl Bosch was awarded the Nobel prize in 1931 for overcoming the engineering problems posed by the large-scale, continuous-flow, high-pressure technology.
Fritz Haber's story is particularly tragic since he was Jewish. Up until the time of Hitler, Haber was an ultra German patriot, and even converted to Christianity in an effort to make himself 100% German. He was an enthusiastic proponent of the use of poison gas during World War I. He found himself to be a man without a country when the Nazis took over. He died a broken man in 1934 in Switzerland.
Carl Bosch was an engineer and business man first and tended to be disrespectful of Nazi politics. The IG Farben Board promoted him to a powerless position to keep him out of public—and Nazi—view. He began to drink excessively, his health began to fail, and he lost interest in living. Before he died in 1940 he confided to his son that he foresaw the destruction of Germany.
There's also an ecological side to this story. Since the agricultural use of nitrogen is generally less that 50% efficient, the use of nitrogen has loaded the world's environment with fixed nitrogen beyond its natural state and has disrupted biological habitats with excessive nutrients leading to algae blooms and eutrophication of lakes.
But there's another side to the Haber-Bosch process. It allowed World War I to last about two years longer than it would have otherwise because it can also be used to make gun powder and explosives. Germany had no access to the raw materials needed to make more explosives without the Haber-Bosch process and without it they simply would have exhausted their supplies. Then later in World War II technologies similar to the Haber-Bosch process allowed Germany to make gasoline from coal. Since Germany had limited access to alternative sources it's hard to imagine how they could have fueled their mechanized army otherwise.
This book also contains an interesting human interest story about the chemist Fritz Haber and engineer Carl Bosch as their careers first received international praise and recognition only to die later as broken men. Fritz Haber was awarded the Nobel prize in 1918 for development of the chemical process, and Carl Bosch was awarded the Nobel prize in 1931 for overcoming the engineering problems posed by the large-scale, continuous-flow, high-pressure technology.
Fritz Haber's story is particularly tragic since he was Jewish. Up until the time of Hitler, Haber was an ultra German patriot, and even converted to Christianity in an effort to make himself 100% German. He was an enthusiastic proponent of the use of poison gas during World War I. He found himself to be a man without a country when the Nazis took over. He died a broken man in 1934 in Switzerland.
Carl Bosch was an engineer and business man first and tended to be disrespectful of Nazi politics. The IG Farben Board promoted him to a powerless position to keep him out of public—and Nazi—view. He began to drink excessively, his health began to fail, and he lost interest in living. Before he died in 1940 he confided to his son that he foresaw the destruction of Germany.
There's also an ecological side to this story. Since the agricultural use of nitrogen is generally less that 50% efficient, the use of nitrogen has loaded the world's environment with fixed nitrogen beyond its natural state and has disrupted biological habitats with excessive nutrients leading to algae blooms and eutrophication of lakes.
November 8, 2016
Hager gives us a compelling history of two men we might not be familiar with: Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch. By the end we know these men were very important. Their accomplishments changed the world.
In 1898 British Academy of Sciences President Sir William Crookes announced that the world faced a crisis. In decades mass starvation would prevail as natural fertilizer stocks were exhausted. The infusion of South American guano in the 1840’s had dramatically increased farm yields. Upon their depletion nitrates from the Chilean desert starting in the 1870’s kept farm yields up. These fertilizers along with improved sanitation and antiseptic medicine were rapidly increasing world population. The population was more urban and eating more meat. Fewer farmers had to produce more. The nitrates were also being used to make explosives.
In 1907 in Germany, Fritz Haber developed a process to make ammonia from air. Ammonia is easily converted into fertilizer or explosives. Ammonia consists of nitrogen and hydrogen. Nitrogen in the air is in a tightly bound molecule (N2) unusable by the human body and many of our important crops. Nitrogen is in every cell in our body. Combining N2 with hydrogen to make ammonia creates fixed nitrogen, nitrogen our bodies and crops can use. Natural fertilizers are formed by bacteria that fix nitrogen.
Haber’s process worked but didn’t scale to the size needed for commercial profitability. The successful dye maker BASF had mastered large scale processes and was looking for a new product to ensure its future. BASF reached a deal with Haber. But it was their young brilliant engineer Carl Bosch who relentlessly solved problem after problem that brought the project to fruition. Haber’s rare metal catalyst had to be replaced with something cheaper. Pure hydrogen had to be produced cheaply. Containment vessels that could contain high temperatures and pressures twenty times that of a steam locomotive boiler had to be built. And the process had to run 24/7 continuously. Bosch assembled a huge team to develop the new catalyst, super strong containment vessels and myriad new technologies and by 1911 could produce tons of ammonia a day. The Haber-Bosch system was born. In 1913 he completed a new factory in Oppau that produced tons per hour and huge profits rolled in.
In 1914, WWI began. The envisioned quick German victory soon evaporated. The British Navy cut off Germany’s access to Chilean nitrates. The BASF plant became critical to the German war effort as a source of explosives first and foremost and fertilizer second. But the plant in Oppau was on the west side of the Rhine and on May 27, 1915 was targeted by French planes in the first aerial industrial bombing of the war. Though the canvas and wood planes and small bombs were primitive, lucky hits could disable the plant.
Bosch, now in charge at BASF, made a lucrative deal with the German government to build a huge plant tucked well inside Germany at Leuna. The new plant would convert the ammonia it produced into nitrate for explosives. It opened in April 1917 and by the end of the war was producing 160,000 tons per year all of which went to the German military. The plant was essentially a single integrated machine two miles long and a mile wide. The Leuna plant may well have extended the war for a year.
Haber, long divorced from active involvement with BASF, turned militaristic. He had achieved prominence leading the prestigious Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry. Haber was a Jew who had converted to Christianity for social acceptability and career advancement. Even so in Germany he was still considered a Jew and second class citizen. This may have added to his desire to prove himself a German patriot. He became a science advisor to Kaiser Wilhelm. He immediately began working on poison gas. He took responsibility not only for making it but its initial deployment. Kaiser Wilhelm gave him the Iron Cross after the first successful use in battle.
The aftermath of the war challenged Bosch and BASF in new ways. Now primarily a nitrate company rather than a dye company, its secret processes were eyed by the world. Its Oppau plant was occupied by the French. Bosch agreed to help France build a plant in order to be allowed to operate his business in Germany freely. Soon the British got plans. The Haber-Bosch system secret was out. Bosch also faced labor unrest from trade unionists and leftist groups. However the great German inflation helped. The large debt the company incurred to the German government to build the Leuna plant was quickly repaid. Similarly the favorable exchange rate fed profits from substantial foreign sales. In a few years BASF was humming.
After the war Haber was investigated as a war criminal but not prosecuted. He returned to run his chemistry institute with his scientific standing intact. In Germany he was a hero. Despite misgivings about his poison gas work, in 1920 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for his development of synthesizing ammonia. Haber, still the super patriot, continued to help the military and began looking for ways to help Germany pay off its reparations. He subsequently spent years trying to figure out how to extract gold from sea water. Unfortunately all he proved was that prior estimates greatly exaggerated the tiny amount of gold in sea water.
Bosch next turned his eyes on synthetic gasoline production. Realizing the rest of the world would soon be competing in the synthetic fertilizer business, Bosch wanted the next big idea. Making gasoline from coal was extremely complicated and expensive, but it was the type of challenge Bosch embraced and he took it on. The investment required was huge. BASF couldn’t do it alone. He got other German companies to merge with BASF creating the largest chemical company in the world, IG Farben, which he ran. Bosch also wanted international partners to invest in the project and also to remove the stigma of IG Farben as a German company. By 1929 he had some agreements most notably with Standard Oil which shared Bosch’s feeling that the world oil supply was limited and declining. But what would prove to be a huge oil strike in Oklahoma had just been made. Soon oil would be much cheaper than synthetic fuel could be manufactured. Then came the stock market crash followed by the depression.
Amidst the cascading bad news, Bosch did win the Nobel Prize in 1931 for his industrial application of Haber’s discovery. But in 1933 a new dangerous development took place. Hitler became chancellor. Bosch was concerned, Haber was in shock. Hitler quickly declared Jews could not work in government positions. Hitler’s edict was not about religion but race. Thus Haber himself would be included except for his preeminent status. He resigned anyway. Jews, who made up a disproportionately large segment of the German scientific community, began leaving Germany in droves. This concerned many other German scientists such as Max Planck who approached Hitler and found him uncompromising.
Haber moved to Cambridge. His health was failing and he was distraught over what had become of Germany and his lifetime of trying to be accepted as a true German. He was also remorseful over the outcome of his personal life which included two failed marriages. Chaim Weizmann talked him into moving to Palestine. Sadly he only made it to Switzerland before his heart condition worsened and he died in 1934.
Bosch was torn. He didn’t like Hitler and he had many Jewish associates on his staff who were important to him. But he saw reality and he saw that the Nazis were very interested in synthetic fuel and synthetic rubber to boot. The Nazi government and IG Farben signed a deal financing the expansion of the Leuna plant. While he found the Nazis repugnant Bosch put business ahead of principle. But in spite of Nazi disapproval in 1935 Bosch with an entourage of old BASF cohorts attended a Max Planck organized memorial for Haber a year following his death. Fearing Bosch would continue to antagonize the Nazis, the IG Farben board kicked Bosch upstairs to a position managing the board but without any operational responsibility. Any remaining Jews or undesirables were ousted or left and IG Farben became one with the Nazi government. Sidelined, Bosch turned to alcohol and suffered from depression. Bosch envisioned only disaster for Germany as it started WWII. He died in April 1940.
The Leuna plant was the target for 22 massive allied bombing raids in the war. The 18,000 tons of explosive they dropped on it were the equal of the Hiroshima bomb. The plant was heavily fortified and well defended by the Germans. Allied bomber losses were heavy. The raids diminished the plant’s output, but it still was producing some gas at war’s end. Albert Speer said after the war that if the plant had been taken out entirely, the war would have ended eight weeks later.
The Haber-Bosch process is still vital today. While greatly modernized, today’s plants work on the same principle and use the same catalyst. In 1972 the first deal China made following Nixon’s opening in 1972 was to order thirteen modern Haber-Bosch fixed nitrogen plants. It was the biggest deal the Chinese communist government had made since it began. Chinese starvation and malnutrition receded into the past. Today China is the world’s largest synthetic fertilizer producer and consumer. Hundreds of huge Haber-Bosch plants around the world are operating. Numerous large pipelines carry their ammonia to market. So endemic is synthetically fixed nitrogen that today half of the nitrogen in our bodies comes from a Haber-Bosch plant.
In 1898 British Academy of Sciences President Sir William Crookes announced that the world faced a crisis. In decades mass starvation would prevail as natural fertilizer stocks were exhausted. The infusion of South American guano in the 1840’s had dramatically increased farm yields. Upon their depletion nitrates from the Chilean desert starting in the 1870’s kept farm yields up. These fertilizers along with improved sanitation and antiseptic medicine were rapidly increasing world population. The population was more urban and eating more meat. Fewer farmers had to produce more. The nitrates were also being used to make explosives.
In 1907 in Germany, Fritz Haber developed a process to make ammonia from air. Ammonia is easily converted into fertilizer or explosives. Ammonia consists of nitrogen and hydrogen. Nitrogen in the air is in a tightly bound molecule (N2) unusable by the human body and many of our important crops. Nitrogen is in every cell in our body. Combining N2 with hydrogen to make ammonia creates fixed nitrogen, nitrogen our bodies and crops can use. Natural fertilizers are formed by bacteria that fix nitrogen.
Haber’s process worked but didn’t scale to the size needed for commercial profitability. The successful dye maker BASF had mastered large scale processes and was looking for a new product to ensure its future. BASF reached a deal with Haber. But it was their young brilliant engineer Carl Bosch who relentlessly solved problem after problem that brought the project to fruition. Haber’s rare metal catalyst had to be replaced with something cheaper. Pure hydrogen had to be produced cheaply. Containment vessels that could contain high temperatures and pressures twenty times that of a steam locomotive boiler had to be built. And the process had to run 24/7 continuously. Bosch assembled a huge team to develop the new catalyst, super strong containment vessels and myriad new technologies and by 1911 could produce tons of ammonia a day. The Haber-Bosch system was born. In 1913 he completed a new factory in Oppau that produced tons per hour and huge profits rolled in.
In 1914, WWI began. The envisioned quick German victory soon evaporated. The British Navy cut off Germany’s access to Chilean nitrates. The BASF plant became critical to the German war effort as a source of explosives first and foremost and fertilizer second. But the plant in Oppau was on the west side of the Rhine and on May 27, 1915 was targeted by French planes in the first aerial industrial bombing of the war. Though the canvas and wood planes and small bombs were primitive, lucky hits could disable the plant.
Bosch, now in charge at BASF, made a lucrative deal with the German government to build a huge plant tucked well inside Germany at Leuna. The new plant would convert the ammonia it produced into nitrate for explosives. It opened in April 1917 and by the end of the war was producing 160,000 tons per year all of which went to the German military. The plant was essentially a single integrated machine two miles long and a mile wide. The Leuna plant may well have extended the war for a year.
Haber, long divorced from active involvement with BASF, turned militaristic. He had achieved prominence leading the prestigious Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry. Haber was a Jew who had converted to Christianity for social acceptability and career advancement. Even so in Germany he was still considered a Jew and second class citizen. This may have added to his desire to prove himself a German patriot. He became a science advisor to Kaiser Wilhelm. He immediately began working on poison gas. He took responsibility not only for making it but its initial deployment. Kaiser Wilhelm gave him the Iron Cross after the first successful use in battle.
The aftermath of the war challenged Bosch and BASF in new ways. Now primarily a nitrate company rather than a dye company, its secret processes were eyed by the world. Its Oppau plant was occupied by the French. Bosch agreed to help France build a plant in order to be allowed to operate his business in Germany freely. Soon the British got plans. The Haber-Bosch system secret was out. Bosch also faced labor unrest from trade unionists and leftist groups. However the great German inflation helped. The large debt the company incurred to the German government to build the Leuna plant was quickly repaid. Similarly the favorable exchange rate fed profits from substantial foreign sales. In a few years BASF was humming.
After the war Haber was investigated as a war criminal but not prosecuted. He returned to run his chemistry institute with his scientific standing intact. In Germany he was a hero. Despite misgivings about his poison gas work, in 1920 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for his development of synthesizing ammonia. Haber, still the super patriot, continued to help the military and began looking for ways to help Germany pay off its reparations. He subsequently spent years trying to figure out how to extract gold from sea water. Unfortunately all he proved was that prior estimates greatly exaggerated the tiny amount of gold in sea water.
Bosch next turned his eyes on synthetic gasoline production. Realizing the rest of the world would soon be competing in the synthetic fertilizer business, Bosch wanted the next big idea. Making gasoline from coal was extremely complicated and expensive, but it was the type of challenge Bosch embraced and he took it on. The investment required was huge. BASF couldn’t do it alone. He got other German companies to merge with BASF creating the largest chemical company in the world, IG Farben, which he ran. Bosch also wanted international partners to invest in the project and also to remove the stigma of IG Farben as a German company. By 1929 he had some agreements most notably with Standard Oil which shared Bosch’s feeling that the world oil supply was limited and declining. But what would prove to be a huge oil strike in Oklahoma had just been made. Soon oil would be much cheaper than synthetic fuel could be manufactured. Then came the stock market crash followed by the depression.
Amidst the cascading bad news, Bosch did win the Nobel Prize in 1931 for his industrial application of Haber’s discovery. But in 1933 a new dangerous development took place. Hitler became chancellor. Bosch was concerned, Haber was in shock. Hitler quickly declared Jews could not work in government positions. Hitler’s edict was not about religion but race. Thus Haber himself would be included except for his preeminent status. He resigned anyway. Jews, who made up a disproportionately large segment of the German scientific community, began leaving Germany in droves. This concerned many other German scientists such as Max Planck who approached Hitler and found him uncompromising.
Haber moved to Cambridge. His health was failing and he was distraught over what had become of Germany and his lifetime of trying to be accepted as a true German. He was also remorseful over the outcome of his personal life which included two failed marriages. Chaim Weizmann talked him into moving to Palestine. Sadly he only made it to Switzerland before his heart condition worsened and he died in 1934.
Bosch was torn. He didn’t like Hitler and he had many Jewish associates on his staff who were important to him. But he saw reality and he saw that the Nazis were very interested in synthetic fuel and synthetic rubber to boot. The Nazi government and IG Farben signed a deal financing the expansion of the Leuna plant. While he found the Nazis repugnant Bosch put business ahead of principle. But in spite of Nazi disapproval in 1935 Bosch with an entourage of old BASF cohorts attended a Max Planck organized memorial for Haber a year following his death. Fearing Bosch would continue to antagonize the Nazis, the IG Farben board kicked Bosch upstairs to a position managing the board but without any operational responsibility. Any remaining Jews or undesirables were ousted or left and IG Farben became one with the Nazi government. Sidelined, Bosch turned to alcohol and suffered from depression. Bosch envisioned only disaster for Germany as it started WWII. He died in April 1940.
The Leuna plant was the target for 22 massive allied bombing raids in the war. The 18,000 tons of explosive they dropped on it were the equal of the Hiroshima bomb. The plant was heavily fortified and well defended by the Germans. Allied bomber losses were heavy. The raids diminished the plant’s output, but it still was producing some gas at war’s end. Albert Speer said after the war that if the plant had been taken out entirely, the war would have ended eight weeks later.
The Haber-Bosch process is still vital today. While greatly modernized, today’s plants work on the same principle and use the same catalyst. In 1972 the first deal China made following Nixon’s opening in 1972 was to order thirteen modern Haber-Bosch fixed nitrogen plants. It was the biggest deal the Chinese communist government had made since it began. Chinese starvation and malnutrition receded into the past. Today China is the world’s largest synthetic fertilizer producer and consumer. Hundreds of huge Haber-Bosch plants around the world are operating. Numerous large pipelines carry their ammonia to market. So endemic is synthetically fixed nitrogen that today half of the nitrogen in our bodies comes from a Haber-Bosch plant.
July 11, 2013
This was such a fascinating book. I loved the history lesson on how physical chemists in Germany learned to fix nitrogen and supply the world with enough fertilizer to feed the growing masses worldwide. The latter part of the book was about what I call "The Law of Unintended Consequences." Fritz Haber discovered how to create ammonia out of air just before WWI. Carl Bosch engineered the process on a large scale to produce ammonia out of air and convert it into fixed nitrogen fertilizer. Between the two of these German scientists, they also fueled Hitler's war against the rest of Europe in the 1930s. The legacy of the Haber-Bosch system lives on today. The last part of the book talks about the impact on our global environment and the unintended consequences of these scientific discoveries. I highly recommend it. Very informative and well told.
April 22, 2019
The Alchemy of Air: A Jewish Genius, a Doomed Tycoon, and the Scientific Discovery That Fed the World but Fueled the Rise of Hitler
Thomas Hager (Goodreads Author)
I never thought fertilizer could be so interesting.
The author briefly covers some of fertilizer's history. In more detail he describes the value and harvesting of bird guano, and then the nitrates of the Atacama.
However, most of the book is about the manufacturing of synthetic fertilizer. There are surprisingly interesting descriptions of the chemical, metallurgical, organizational, and financial challenges that had to be met for synthetic fertilizer to be competitive.
Most of this engineering effort took place in Germany, by a large German manufacturing company. Then came WWII. Many of the leading scientists in the field were Jewish. Under pressure, many fled, and their knowledge and talents left Germany.
Today we enjoy the benefits of their pioneering efforts, without even realizing the enormous difficulties that had to be overcome.
Thomas Hager (Goodreads Author)
I never thought fertilizer could be so interesting.
The author briefly covers some of fertilizer's history. In more detail he describes the value and harvesting of bird guano, and then the nitrates of the Atacama.
However, most of the book is about the manufacturing of synthetic fertilizer. There are surprisingly interesting descriptions of the chemical, metallurgical, organizational, and financial challenges that had to be met for synthetic fertilizer to be competitive.
Most of this engineering effort took place in Germany, by a large German manufacturing company. Then came WWII. Many of the leading scientists in the field were Jewish. Under pressure, many fled, and their knowledge and talents left Germany.
Today we enjoy the benefits of their pioneering efforts, without even realizing the enormous difficulties that had to be overcome.
July 26, 2018
A fascinating history of fixed nitrogen and the complex of related chemicals that provide us with fertilizer and explosives, and the two Nobel prize winning scientists who developed the process which enabled us to produce these substances in substantial amounts. Well written, focusing on the difficulties that first Fritz Haber, then Carl Bosch, faced in producing ammonia, which could then be used to produce other nitrogen compounds, out of thin air, as it were. This is an enjoyable narrative, almost fiction like, but obviously well researched, that brings to life a specific period in the early 20th century. The author makes the two scientists very human, exposing not just their genius and persistence, but also their personalities and foibles. They accomplished an amazing feat and received quite a bit of deserved recognition during their lives, but both also died somewhat disillusioned and diminished. Their great accomplishment made it possible for our limited earth to grow enough food to feed more than ten times the world's population as of the date they started, but it also enable two world wars and untold suffering.
The author does not get into the weeds on the chemical properties and processes involved but instead described them in just enough detail for it to make sense to the non chemist. The author does not apologize for this lack; he knows he's writing for the lay person. As a lay person, however, I would like to have seen a little bit more detail. Enough that I could understand better why it was such an monumental achievement. Also, the author only briefly, in the last chapter, touches on the long term negative consequences of the development of synthetic fertilizers.
However, it was a very enjoyable, engrossing read and I would recommend it to anyone interested in science history.
The author does not get into the weeds on the chemical properties and processes involved but instead described them in just enough detail for it to make sense to the non chemist. The author does not apologize for this lack; he knows he's writing for the lay person. As a lay person, however, I would like to have seen a little bit more detail. Enough that I could understand better why it was such an monumental achievement. Also, the author only briefly, in the last chapter, touches on the long term negative consequences of the development of synthetic fertilizers.
However, it was a very enjoyable, engrossing read and I would recommend it to anyone interested in science history.
August 4, 2019
The core of this story is summarised in about a page and a half in The Wizard and the Prophet: the process that makes nitrate fertilizer from the nitrogen in air is possibly the most significant invention of all time, measured in billions of lives saved from starvation, and in its world-historical enabling of German aggression in both world wars. Instead of belabouring it, Hager uses the rest of the book to tell a lot of broader, only slightly related stories, beginning with the War of the Pacific (Chile's ignoble takeover of lucrative guano islands), and stretching to the afterlife of both Haber and Bosch, the role of IG Farben in Nazi warcrimes, and a bit about the Green Revolution and nitrogen runoff creating "dead zones" in the Gulf of Mexico.
The long subtitle tries to cast it as piece of German-Jewish history à la Gold and Iron or The Pity of It All: A Portrait of the German-Jewish Epoch 1743-1933. It isn't really. But it is a well-written history of technology, looking equally at engineers racing to get a product to market and at the politics of global supply chains (hence the first naval battle of WWI was off the coast of Chile). No doubt one day historians will write global histories of modern tech giants, with supply chains from Cambodia to China to Silicon Valley, and the weight they exert on our political economy.
The long subtitle tries to cast it as piece of German-Jewish history à la Gold and Iron or The Pity of It All: A Portrait of the German-Jewish Epoch 1743-1933. It isn't really. But it is a well-written history of technology, looking equally at engineers racing to get a product to market and at the politics of global supply chains (hence the first naval battle of WWI was off the coast of Chile). No doubt one day historians will write global histories of modern tech giants, with supply chains from Cambodia to China to Silicon Valley, and the weight they exert on our political economy.
Read
June 13, 2014This is an interesting walk through history following two gifted and interesting Jewish gentlemen from Germany leading up to and through the Second World War. I enjoyed the chapters detailing the history of nitrate and how important it was to the world from the earliest days. Guano wars and exploration to pull nitrogen out of everything known to man. There is an interesting finding that as early as 1920 human beings, at least Europeans, have known that without fertilizer the world could not feed the massive population of human beings that resides here.
There are a couple of things missing that, I don't know if they should be included or not but I had questions. Like, what impact did the Tambora eruption in April 1815 have, if any on the nitrate trade? This was the eruption that forced Mary Shelley, Percy Shelly and Lord Byron indoors on what should have been a wonderful summer vacation on the Black Sea. Mountains of ash vomited into the atmophere with enough volume to blot out the sun and cause massive crop failures etc. It seemed with all the emphasis on the exponential growth in population of the human race, that this event might have had some significance. And, even though it was touched on as a possibility, surely there is better information available about the link between the Bread to Air machine (Haber-Bosch) and current climate change challenges.
Those niggling unanswered questions aside, this is a wonderful story of two men who's expertise, intelligence and creativity created a process and machine to pull the very basic ingredient needed to feed the planet. It painted a wonderful interesting tapestry of the past givng colourful details about all parts of the world and the search for nitrate. Not only did this tell about the invention of the Haber-Bosch machine, it delved into the politics of the day, the history of industrialization and painted a picture, seldom completed in other books, of what German society was like after 1900 but before the second world war.
Facinating and detailed this did a good job of helping us understand that "people" invented everything we have that was not provided by nature and God. And, above all that People have stories and some of them are very interesting.
3.5 stars. I deducted because I think some things are missing. It's still recommended, interesting and worth reading if you like history.
There are a couple of things missing that, I don't know if they should be included or not but I had questions. Like, what impact did the Tambora eruption in April 1815 have, if any on the nitrate trade? This was the eruption that forced Mary Shelley, Percy Shelly and Lord Byron indoors on what should have been a wonderful summer vacation on the Black Sea. Mountains of ash vomited into the atmophere with enough volume to blot out the sun and cause massive crop failures etc. It seemed with all the emphasis on the exponential growth in population of the human race, that this event might have had some significance. And, even though it was touched on as a possibility, surely there is better information available about the link between the Bread to Air machine (Haber-Bosch) and current climate change challenges.
Those niggling unanswered questions aside, this is a wonderful story of two men who's expertise, intelligence and creativity created a process and machine to pull the very basic ingredient needed to feed the planet. It painted a wonderful interesting tapestry of the past givng colourful details about all parts of the world and the search for nitrate. Not only did this tell about the invention of the Haber-Bosch machine, it delved into the politics of the day, the history of industrialization and painted a picture, seldom completed in other books, of what German society was like after 1900 but before the second world war.
Facinating and detailed this did a good job of helping us understand that "people" invented everything we have that was not provided by nature and God. And, above all that People have stories and some of them are very interesting.
3.5 stars. I deducted because I think some things are missing. It's still recommended, interesting and worth reading if you like history.
April 26, 2017
The Washington Post starts off its review of this book: "Somehow fertilizer seems an unlikely subject for a Faustian tale about pride, vanity and ambition. Yet here it is..."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/...
By Faustian, I suppose Hager means the two main biographical characters, Bosch and Haber, "sold their soul" to "the devil." I find myself not entirely comfortable with this framing/analogy, though I can't quite focus in on why I find it unsuitable.
The ambition and focus of Bosch and Haber were immense and their contributions to science and industry, monumental. I don't know that I agree that they were precisely, as Hager says, "brought low by their own, very human failings". But certainly they made wings with the fevered, perhaps monomanaical passion of Daedalus and flew high in a mythological sense, like Icarus and, like Icarus, were brought low. Is there some connection here between Icarus and Daedalus and Faust? Hmmm.
But the fates of Bosch and Haber were caught up in currents of history whose powers and complexity were greater than even they, insightful as they were, could have imagined (though Bosch to some degree, as he lost all hope around the start of World War II, predicted Germany's self-destruction). Their stories are tangled up with history in a way that makes them something other than actors in their own, tragic odyssey...
This book takes an important and wonderful look at global relationships around trade, politics and resources, starting before WWI and takes us through WWII and beyond. It's a bit of an epic sweep, though the broad scope at the beginning in many ways narrows as the book moves forward. It's an incredible story that begins with an island of shit. We have 1) A world in need of food, and nutrient-rich (Nitrogen rich) soil in which to grow food. 2) An island layered with guano that provides just enough fertilizer to demonstrate how much more fertilizer will be needed to sustain world populations. 3) The discovery of the interchangeability of explosives and fertilizer. 4) The race to produce synthetic nitrogen for fertilizer and the terrifying (and wondrous?) evolution of the modern day chemical factory. 5) Not to mention the drama of Jewish scientists in Germany before WWII--in this case focusing on Haber, a scientist who goes to great lengths to become an 'assimilated' German (including converting to Christianity) whose efforts to assimilate and whose notorious patriotism in the first world war alienate a larger world community and in no way protect him from persecution by the Nazis.
These two men, together, led Germany to a height of industrial powe, only to be brought low by the horrors of the Nazi regime.
Hager (the writer of the Washington Post review, not to be confused with Haber, the scientist whose life is explored in the book) seems to think both men, Haber and Bosch, "deserve" or at least "walked into" their fate.
"But when Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, things changed. Haber suddenly understood that he would always be Jewish and that the terrible bargains he had made would bring him nothing but contempt and ostracism. Bosch, heartsick at the prospect of firing large numbers of his Jewish employees in a Nazi purge, sought an exception in a personal interview with Hitler, only to endure an anti-Semitic tirade. He realized that the immense industrial enterprise to which he had dedicated his life had been placed at the service of a monster.
"Yet neither man is to be pitied, for both made their choices freely. Inventing fertilizer may have helped mankind, but it also launched their careers, and both took advantage. At the beginning of World War I, Bosch volunteered to convert his entire operation to the manufacture of explosives, fertilizer's chemical first cousin. The government subsidized the biggest munitions plant in the world and built it partly with slave labor. Haber, also eager to please, joined the war ministry, donned a captain's uniform, developed a method of blanketing enemy trenches with poisonous chlorine gas and oversaw its first successful demonstration at Ypres in 1915."
I don't know that "free choice" is a meaningful category in this situation. I think it is fine to have complicated feelings about these men. To criticize and also to have compassion, for neither meant to help build the machinery of genocide.
It is interesting to think how Haber's drive to become "German" might have led him to be much more aggressive in terms of creating weapons for the German war effort during WWI. His need to prove himself as "authentically" German led him to be nationalistic in a way we could, in hindsight, criticize. But his advocating for the use of chemical weapons during WWI was not a form of malice or a wish to destroy other nations. He hoped the presence of these weapons would stop the fighting and actually save lives on all sides. In any case, any engagement with the progress of technology could be framed as Faustian because no technology is exactly innocent just as no technology is exactly guilty. Evolution has required an arms race and it has gotten one, and as dreadful as it is, it also seems to be part of the waters in which we swim (and which we, sadly, can't seem to stop ourselves from damning.)
In any case, this is a fine book and there are several great reviews on GR (much better than this.) So if this review doesn't convince you, perhaps try a few more?
Hager comments that the book is too short, and could easily have been twice as long. Maybe "The Alchemy of Air" will inspire some kind of sequel, or at least more writing about Bosch, which Hager says is quite lacking.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/...
By Faustian, I suppose Hager means the two main biographical characters, Bosch and Haber, "sold their soul" to "the devil." I find myself not entirely comfortable with this framing/analogy, though I can't quite focus in on why I find it unsuitable.
The ambition and focus of Bosch and Haber were immense and their contributions to science and industry, monumental. I don't know that I agree that they were precisely, as Hager says, "brought low by their own, very human failings". But certainly they made wings with the fevered, perhaps monomanaical passion of Daedalus and flew high in a mythological sense, like Icarus and, like Icarus, were brought low. Is there some connection here between Icarus and Daedalus and Faust? Hmmm.
But the fates of Bosch and Haber were caught up in currents of history whose powers and complexity were greater than even they, insightful as they were, could have imagined (though Bosch to some degree, as he lost all hope around the start of World War II, predicted Germany's self-destruction). Their stories are tangled up with history in a way that makes them something other than actors in their own, tragic odyssey...
This book takes an important and wonderful look at global relationships around trade, politics and resources, starting before WWI and takes us through WWII and beyond. It's a bit of an epic sweep, though the broad scope at the beginning in many ways narrows as the book moves forward. It's an incredible story that begins with an island of shit. We have 1) A world in need of food, and nutrient-rich (Nitrogen rich) soil in which to grow food. 2) An island layered with guano that provides just enough fertilizer to demonstrate how much more fertilizer will be needed to sustain world populations. 3) The discovery of the interchangeability of explosives and fertilizer. 4) The race to produce synthetic nitrogen for fertilizer and the terrifying (and wondrous?) evolution of the modern day chemical factory. 5) Not to mention the drama of Jewish scientists in Germany before WWII--in this case focusing on Haber, a scientist who goes to great lengths to become an 'assimilated' German (including converting to Christianity) whose efforts to assimilate and whose notorious patriotism in the first world war alienate a larger world community and in no way protect him from persecution by the Nazis.
These two men, together, led Germany to a height of industrial powe, only to be brought low by the horrors of the Nazi regime.
Hager (the writer of the Washington Post review, not to be confused with Haber, the scientist whose life is explored in the book) seems to think both men, Haber and Bosch, "deserve" or at least "walked into" their fate.
"But when Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, things changed. Haber suddenly understood that he would always be Jewish and that the terrible bargains he had made would bring him nothing but contempt and ostracism. Bosch, heartsick at the prospect of firing large numbers of his Jewish employees in a Nazi purge, sought an exception in a personal interview with Hitler, only to endure an anti-Semitic tirade. He realized that the immense industrial enterprise to which he had dedicated his life had been placed at the service of a monster.
"Yet neither man is to be pitied, for both made their choices freely. Inventing fertilizer may have helped mankind, but it also launched their careers, and both took advantage. At the beginning of World War I, Bosch volunteered to convert his entire operation to the manufacture of explosives, fertilizer's chemical first cousin. The government subsidized the biggest munitions plant in the world and built it partly with slave labor. Haber, also eager to please, joined the war ministry, donned a captain's uniform, developed a method of blanketing enemy trenches with poisonous chlorine gas and oversaw its first successful demonstration at Ypres in 1915."
I don't know that "free choice" is a meaningful category in this situation. I think it is fine to have complicated feelings about these men. To criticize and also to have compassion, for neither meant to help build the machinery of genocide.
It is interesting to think how Haber's drive to become "German" might have led him to be much more aggressive in terms of creating weapons for the German war effort during WWI. His need to prove himself as "authentically" German led him to be nationalistic in a way we could, in hindsight, criticize. But his advocating for the use of chemical weapons during WWI was not a form of malice or a wish to destroy other nations. He hoped the presence of these weapons would stop the fighting and actually save lives on all sides. In any case, any engagement with the progress of technology could be framed as Faustian because no technology is exactly innocent just as no technology is exactly guilty. Evolution has required an arms race and it has gotten one, and as dreadful as it is, it also seems to be part of the waters in which we swim (and which we, sadly, can't seem to stop ourselves from damning.)
In any case, this is a fine book and there are several great reviews on GR (much better than this.) So if this review doesn't convince you, perhaps try a few more?
Hager comments that the book is too short, and could easily have been twice as long. Maybe "The Alchemy of Air" will inspire some kind of sequel, or at least more writing about Bosch, which Hager says is quite lacking.
June 10, 2020
Favorite book of 2020 thus far. I couldn't put this down.
An incredibly insightful look into the history of Haber Bosch process, and the implications of Haber and Bosch's independent work and discoveries.
Extremely thought-provoking with respect to scientific discovery, the role of government, and where and how advancement and creativity flourishes.
An incredibly insightful look into the history of Haber Bosch process, and the implications of Haber and Bosch's independent work and discoveries.
Extremely thought-provoking with respect to scientific discovery, the role of government, and where and how advancement and creativity flourishes.
November 24, 2019
Who knew fertilizer could be so interesting? This book is about the chemistry and history of fertilizer, including the discovery of saltpeter and then the geniuses who figured out how to pull nitrogen out of the air and efficiently apply it to get vastly higher yields from fields, thus feeding the world. The author weaves this science and engineering with the biographies of these 2 brilliant Germans, a scientist and an engineer, along with the history of the time spanning pre-WWI through WW2. Unsurprisingly, their situations went from patriotic Germans eager to support their country to angst over their roles in furthering Hitler's deadly agenda. These 2 were interesting characters, one being a Jew with a keen desire to be accepted as a valuable member of German society, the other an engineer who lived and breathed his work and dreamed of it benefitting the world. WWII is rough on these guys.
Very well written. I couldn't put it down.
Very well written. I couldn't put it down.
November 5, 2008
Call it "sensational science" - a great story about (of all things) fixing nitrogen from the air, which involves slavery, U.S. land annexation, a Jewish scientist, WWI poison gas, BASF, the rise of Hitler....easy to read non-fiction and too fascinating to put down!
June 25, 2023
I read this book at the insistence of my father, as I (perhaps in a bit of snobbery) thought a book about fertilizer would be extraordinarily dull. I could not have been more wrong. Written by a relatively unknown author of scientific books, the prose is eminently readable and elegant, and the story of the development of the Haber-Bosch process which has solved Thomas Malthus' and Sir William Crooke's (to name two of many) prognostication of mass starvation due to the lack of something that is all around us, but largely unusable: N2. I had no idea the importance of fixed nitrogen, nor its scarcity and immense value before reading this book, and have to admit I am more than a little disturbed at how chemists have managed to become "alchemists of the air" and altered the very nature of life on earth and the biosphere thanks to Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch's intense labors. Were it not for this process and its ability to convert N2 into NH3 and then fertilizer (or munitions), the Earth, if all available arable land were under cultivation with the best agricultural practices would only be able to support 4 billion people. That is far less than the current population of the world today, and a testament to the importance of the Haber-Bosch process, considering a great amount of arable land is either paved over or simply mismanaged. The implications and potential ramifications of the Haber-Bosch process are astounding. How had this book not become a New York Times bestseller?
Addendum: years later I am learning that Fritz Haver was also the pioneer of poison gas in WW1, including the infamous series of gases that would be Zyklon A and Zyklon B, and that his wife committed suicide by revolver, presumably in protest of his use of chemicals in warfare. I was not aware of this whitewashing when I read this book, which.. may have been outside it’s scope if I’m being generous, and… really an unfortunate oversight if I’m not.
Addendum: years later I am learning that Fritz Haver was also the pioneer of poison gas in WW1, including the infamous series of gases that would be Zyklon A and Zyklon B, and that his wife committed suicide by revolver, presumably in protest of his use of chemicals in warfare. I was not aware of this whitewashing when I read this book, which.. may have been outside it’s scope if I’m being generous, and… really an unfortunate oversight if I’m not.
March 10, 2013
The synopsis in Goodreads covers the general course of the book, but puts more emphasis on the final outcome than the process, which does not reflect the relative focus of the book. This book does an excellent job of explaining the need for nitrogen fertilizers, the history of the commercial trade, and just how difficult is was to develop the process to convert nitrogen gas to ammonia. Some of the science is slightly off the mark, but is not critical to the story.
What was left out of the review was the role that the Nazis had in the story, the twisted relationship Huber had with Judaism, and how most of the German scientific community abandoned their Jewish colleagues when Hitler made his intentions known.
This is an excellent book which tells the story of an amazing scientific advance, the role of business in the success of this development, and the unintended consequences.
I may be biased since I have spent most of my career trying to make crop use of nitrogen more efficient.
What was left out of the review was the role that the Nazis had in the story, the twisted relationship Huber had with Judaism, and how most of the German scientific community abandoned their Jewish colleagues when Hitler made his intentions known.
This is an excellent book which tells the story of an amazing scientific advance, the role of business in the success of this development, and the unintended consequences.
I may be biased since I have spent most of my career trying to make crop use of nitrogen more efficient.
April 19, 2023
If I could give this book to one person, it would be my teenage self to show her that chemistry can be really cool. The author does a great job of explaining Haber’s & Bosch’s work in the sociopolitical environment in which they existed. I don’t think anyone will make a musical out of the story of what these guys did to change the world anytime soon, but it really is pretty mind boggling to think that our very bodies are in significant part made up of nitrogen produced through the Haber-Bosch process. It was really humbling too to read how both men had put so much energy into their work and their legacies, at the expense of other parts of their lives, and in the end wound up with very little to show for it or mixed outcomes (mostly bc of the Nazi government, but also bc of their roles in creating new modern and chemical weapons)
September 12, 2019
The story of how to extract nitrogen from the air, leading to the development of artificial fertilizer as well as to explosives. The process developed also made possible artificial gas derived from coal. The focus is on the two main players: Fritz Haber, who got the process of extracting nitrogen to the point here it was commercially viable, and Carl Bosch, who scaled it up to industrial levels. Both would go on to collect Nobel Prizes; both would be severely disillusioned by the Nazi regime.
The story moved along at a brisk clip, and I learned more than I would ever have expected to about agriculture! The chemistry was frequently over my head, although I understood the gist.
I enjoyed this very much more than I had expected to.
The story moved along at a brisk clip, and I learned more than I would ever have expected to about agriculture! The chemistry was frequently over my head, although I understood the gist.
I enjoyed this very much more than I had expected to.
April 8, 2009
A fascinating back-story of the pre-eminent position nitrates held in human lives and how a chemical process averted genocide by starvation for the human race, and lets the present civilisation live way beyond the means of "organic" production.
Also engrossing is the story of inventors Carl Bosch and Fritz Haber and their different paths and contributions to modern science and society, and of course the jewish-nazi conflict. A very good book because it draws a parallel between an earlier crisis that was bested by human ingenuity and the as yet unknown fate that will befall society after its stand-off with climate change.
Also engrossing is the story of inventors Carl Bosch and Fritz Haber and their different paths and contributions to modern science and society, and of course the jewish-nazi conflict. A very good book because it draws a parallel between an earlier crisis that was bested by human ingenuity and the as yet unknown fate that will befall society after its stand-off with climate change.
September 12, 2017
I learned so much from this book--about chemistry and history and humans who aim to do good but whose efforts turn out to result in both good and unspeakable evil. Hager tells a very important story engagingly, unblinkingly. And he follows the story with an epilogue that suggests we have larger concerns than simple 'global warming.' Our fertilizer--something that is used for good--is possibly doing the most damage of all to our environment even while it's feeding the world. I will be thinking about this book and recommending it for a long time to come.
February 23, 2009
An excellently written story about two tragic scientists who discovery of how to extract nitrogen from the atmosphere fed billions and killed millions.
After explaining the important role nitrogen plays as a fertilizer and as an explosive, The Alchemy of Air then traces the history of the two tragic German scientists (Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch) who discovered a process that allowed nitrogen to be pulled from of air.
A great read!
After explaining the important role nitrogen plays as a fertilizer and as an explosive, The Alchemy of Air then traces the history of the two tragic German scientists (Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch) who discovered a process that allowed nitrogen to be pulled from of air.
A great read!
March 2, 2018
I love reading history but I love it even more when I can find a history book that is about a subject I have never learned about before. I got a pleasant surprise with this book. Not only was it about a topic I have never studied before, I have never even heard about this history topic! Exceptionally well written and organized. A much enjoyed read. Highly recommended
August 16, 2023
Fantastic book. Presents a balanced view of the players and tech involved. My only issue is that I think there should have been footnotes. He dismisses the need for footnotes in the source notes section - but it is hard to tie it back to the writing and a couple numbers he cites aren't linked clearly to a source.
March 10, 2024
Ok dead ass didn’t wanna read this book. Started reading it, got sucked in within the first like 20 pages and it just got like so much better and better and better. HISTORY IS WILD MAN!? I gotta google all these places. I can’t believe the leuna (spelling?) is still operational? Like what? LFMAO
April 6, 2021
A story that perfectly illustrates the double-edged sword nature of massive science discoveries.
November 17, 2017
WOW!! This was so well done. Of course, synthetic fertilizer is one of the most important inventions of our time. It's kind of amazing if you think about how much impact it has had. In this story, he takes you through the history of fertilizers... which is fascinating!! I swear!! And hand and hand with fertilizer is gunpowder, which is also nitrogen based.
The author does a great job of bringing to life all of the people involved. I will be looking for more books by Thomas Hager.
I was thinking that maybe this book would be a history of the discovery of synthetic fertilizer and then a flimsy connection to Hitler, but that was not the case. The argument is well made that this one invention did in fact fuel the rise and early successes of Hitler.
I would highly recommend this, especially if you have any interest in history.
The author does a great job of bringing to life all of the people involved. I will be looking for more books by Thomas Hager.
I was thinking that maybe this book would be a history of the discovery of synthetic fertilizer and then a flimsy connection to Hitler, but that was not the case. The argument is well made that this one invention did in fact fuel the rise and early successes of Hitler.
I would highly recommend this, especially if you have any interest in history.
August 16, 2020
This was a really interesting story that I think way more people should know about. And the parts having to do with the S. American nitrate trade in the 1800s (i.e. Peruvian guano and Chilean saltpeter) were fascinating. As a scientist, I would have liked to see a bit more of the science -- this book about chemistry was written at such a general level that even the proper names and symbols for molecules discussed were barely mentioned! In addition, the writing seemed a bit uneven (and sometimes a bit repetitive). In general, though, it was well worth the read and I learned a lot about a topic that has been super important over the last century plus, but most people are totally ignorant about it: "fixed" Nitrogen!
June 16, 2019
Bu kitabı Pan yayıncılık tarafından Havadaki Simya adıyla yayınlanan Türkçe çevirisinden okudum.
Yaşamı oluşturan iki element döngüsünden biri olan azot döngüsünün, havadaki azotun yaklaşık 100 yıl önce İki tutkulu ve çok çalışkan bilim / işadamının çabalarıyla Amon yaka çevrilebilmesinin hikayesini çok güzel akıcı sade bir dille anlatıyor.
Sonunda bugün ulaşmış olduğumuz refah seviyesinin ama bunun yanında yaşadığımız obezite çevre kirliliği gibi bir çok güncel sorunun bu tarihi buluşun doğrudan ve dolaylı etkileri olduğunu farkına varıyoruz.
Muhteşem bir inceleme. bir çok farklı konunun ortak yanını ortaya koyuyor ve kolay okunuyor. Türkçe çevirisi de kusursuz.
Yaşamı oluşturan iki element döngüsünden biri olan azot döngüsünün, havadaki azotun yaklaşık 100 yıl önce İki tutkulu ve çok çalışkan bilim / işadamının çabalarıyla Amon yaka çevrilebilmesinin hikayesini çok güzel akıcı sade bir dille anlatıyor.
Sonunda bugün ulaşmış olduğumuz refah seviyesinin ama bunun yanında yaşadığımız obezite çevre kirliliği gibi bir çok güncel sorunun bu tarihi buluşun doğrudan ve dolaylı etkileri olduğunu farkına varıyoruz.
Muhteşem bir inceleme. bir çok farklı konunun ortak yanını ortaya koyuyor ve kolay okunuyor. Türkçe çevirisi de kusursuz.
August 18, 2018
This was destined to be a 4star read from the moment I found it in a now forgotten goodreads list. The subject plays right into my interests and the author only had ground to lose but thankfully did not disappoint in the slightest. Fascinating how something as innocuous as nitrogen which makes up 79% of air, once chemically mastered totally reshaped the course of the 20th century, first feeding men, then killing them.
August 10, 2012
I admit I had no idea what this book was about. I got it because it had a cool title and the cover looked awesome. Surprise its about Nitrogen, fertilizer, deadly gas, and two slightly likable somewhat villainous scientists! If I had known this I probably wouldn't have picked it up, which would have been too bad because it was actually very enjoyable.
May 20, 2019
A well-written and page-turning history of the Haber-Bosch process: pulling nitrogen out of the atmosphere and transforming it into ammonia for fertilizer - or explosives. Hager balances biography, science, industry and politics in an engaging and exiting narrative.
I'm flip-flopping between 4 and 5 stars.
I'm flip-flopping between 4 and 5 stars.
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