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The Alchemy of Air is a breezy (pun intended) scientific history, focusing on the development of synthetic nitrogen via the Haber-Bosch process, and the lives of the two scientists who developed it.
Hager takes a broad look at fertilizer to begin with. Though the atmosphere is mostly nitrogen, triple bonded gaseous N2 is biologically unavailable. Only a small fraction of 'fixed' nitrogen is available for plants to use. Farmers have known this for millennia, using manure and crop rotation to keep up the fertility of fields. The 19th century, with massive improvements in sanitation and commensurate increases in population, put more even more pressure on agriculture. Fertility was kept up only with Peruvian guano and Chilean nitrate salts, and the world seemed headed for Malthusian catastrophe.
Artificial nitrogen from the air would be the new alchemist's stone. Haber was an ambitious Jewish German scientist who figured out a process for creating ammonia using high temperature and pressure hydrogen over an iron catalyst. Bosch was an unusual proto-chemical engineer who took Haber's bench set up and created a new kind of city-sized industrial factory. BASF ("We don't make the things you buy, we make them better") started full scale ammonia production in 1913 or so.
This was fortuitous, because the other key use of nitrogen compounds is in explosives. The war machine had a prodigious appetite for gunpowder and other high explosives, and stockpiles intended to last years were consumed in weeks. British blockade cut Germany off from Chilean nitrates, and Hager estimates that Germany would have surrendered in 1916 without Haber-Bosch.
Meanwhile, Haber became a fierce Prussian militarist and patriot. He pioneered the development of chemical warfare, but at great personal cost. His wife Clara, a PhD chemist in her own right, committed suicide on the eve of the first gas attack. Haber was added to a list of war criminals.
Weimar was a time of growth for both men. They both won Nobel prizes. Haber became director of a Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, at the acme of German science. Bosch became director of BASF and then IG Farben, where he devoted efforts to an even larger nitrogen plant at Leuna and synthetic gasoline. The rise of Hitler brought both men to their downfall. A Jew, even one who had converted to Christianity like Haber, could never hold a post in the Third Reich. Haber was forced to resign, and died shortly thereafter of a heart attack. Bosch and IG Farben played the necessary political games, but while Bosch was no rebel, he was not a Nazi either, and he was forced out of his company. He died in 1940, predicting a war that would inevitably destroy Germany, even as his synthetic gas and synthetic rubber Hitler's conquests possible.
We live in a world made by the Haber-Bosch process. About 50% of the nitrogen in our bodies originated in Haber-Bosch plants, which consume 1% of the world's energy. I wish this book had been a little more detailed, especially on the science side, but Hager has a gift for finding romanticism and adventure, even in chemical engineering.
Hager takes a broad look at fertilizer to begin with. Though the atmosphere is mostly nitrogen, triple bonded gaseous N2 is biologically unavailable. Only a small fraction of 'fixed' nitrogen is available for plants to use. Farmers have known this for millennia, using manure and crop rotation to keep up the fertility of fields. The 19th century, with massive improvements in sanitation and commensurate increases in population, put more even more pressure on agriculture. Fertility was kept up only with Peruvian guano and Chilean nitrate salts, and the world seemed headed for Malthusian catastrophe.
Artificial nitrogen from the air would be the new alchemist's stone. Haber was an ambitious Jewish German scientist who figured out a process for creating ammonia using high temperature and pressure hydrogen over an iron catalyst. Bosch was an unusual proto-chemical engineer who took Haber's bench set up and created a new kind of city-sized industrial factory. BASF ("We don't make the things you buy, we make them better") started full scale ammonia production in 1913 or so.
This was fortuitous, because the other key use of nitrogen compounds is in explosives. The war machine had a prodigious appetite for gunpowder and other high explosives, and stockpiles intended to last years were consumed in weeks. British blockade cut Germany off from Chilean nitrates, and Hager estimates that Germany would have surrendered in 1916 without Haber-Bosch.
Meanwhile, Haber became a fierce Prussian militarist and patriot. He pioneered the development of chemical warfare, but at great personal cost. His wife Clara, a PhD chemist in her own right, committed suicide on the eve of the first gas attack. Haber was added to a list of war criminals.
Weimar was a time of growth for both men. They both won Nobel prizes. Haber became director of a Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, at the acme of German science. Bosch became director of BASF and then IG Farben, where he devoted efforts to an even larger nitrogen plant at Leuna and synthetic gasoline. The rise of Hitler brought both men to their downfall. A Jew, even one who had converted to Christianity like Haber, could never hold a post in the Third Reich. Haber was forced to resign, and died shortly thereafter of a heart attack. Bosch and IG Farben played the necessary political games, but while Bosch was no rebel, he was not a Nazi either, and he was forced out of his company. He died in 1940, predicting a war that would inevitably destroy Germany, even as his synthetic gas and synthetic rubber Hitler's conquests possible.
We live in a world made by the Haber-Bosch process. About 50% of the nitrogen in our bodies originated in Haber-Bosch plants, which consume 1% of the world's energy. I wish this book had been a little more detailed, especially on the science side, but Hager has a gift for finding romanticism and adventure, even in chemical engineering.