Fritz Haber: Chemist, Nobel Laureate, German, Jew (review)

The German physical chemist Fritz Haber (1868-1934) has been dead for seventy-one years, yet his story remains fascinating, controversial, and instructive. My interest in Haber began in graduate school, and since then his life and work, especially his ammonia synthesis and World War I poison-gas program, have become part of my survey courses in the history of science and U.S. history. Although these developments remain crucial to a complete understanding of World War I, Haber is absent from discussions of the war in every U.S. and most European history textbooks. Hence Dietrich Stoltzenberg's biography warrants a wide readership.

There is more to Haber than his World War I involvement. His scientific work had long-term consequences in many fields of science—physics, physical chemistry (especially thermodynamics and electrochemistry), and biochemistry—as well as in the applied fields of chemical technology and agriculture. He excelled in fusing science and politics. The scientist and German patriot became one. Stoltzenberg contrasts Haber, patriotic scientist and statesman, with Haber, Jew and failed family man. An underlying question remains relevant today: When does blind patriotism become immorality and possibly criminal behavior?

As Stoltzenberg notes, Haber's scientific reputation resulted largely from his successful high-pressure synthesis of ammonia, NH₃, from its elements nitrogen and hydrogen. Ever since William Crookes, in an 1898 address before the British Association for the Advancement of Science, warned of an impending world food crisis, scientists had searched for ways to fix atmospheric nitrogen in chemical compounds and thereby produce the fertilizers essential for increased crop production. None of the fixation processes proved economically feasible until 1908, when Haber in Karlsruhe developed the ammonia synthesis.

Even though Wilhelm Ostwald and Walther Nernst had experimented with ammonia's synthesis, it was Haber who succeeded in establishing the proper temperature and pressure conditions and finding catalysts that made it practical. He developed only a laboratory-scale synthesis, and its transformation into a successful industrial process required the genius of Carl Bosch and Alwin Mittasch at BASF in Ludwigshafen. The scale-up occurred in 1913, and the timing was fortuitous. BASF's success in industrializing the reaction of ammonia gas with oxygen to give the nitrates required for the production of fertilizers and explosives followed in May 1915. Germany's military had initially planned for a six-month war and had only limited supplies of each. The new synthesis enabled Germany to continue the war.

The war involved Haber in another, far less noble way. Haber, who had converted from Judaism to Protestantism in 1892-94 and regarded himself as a dedicated German patriot, directed Germany's poison gas program. While he had earned the respect of the international scientific community for his ammonia synthesis, his war work—in violation of international law—led to his classification as a war criminal and to strong protests when he was awarded the 1918 Nobel Prize in chemistry. Animosity faded, however, and by the time of his forced exile and death in 1934, Haber had become a sympathetic figure.

Haber the statesman succeeded in promoting the growth of German and international scientific organizations, such as the Emergency Association of German Science, and in advancing the careers of those who worked with him or studied under him. But he failed as a husband and family man. As with his friend Einstein, science dominated his life, and he expected others to subordinate their lives to his. His first wife shot herself in 1915, his second divorced him in 1927.

Stoltzenberg's biography is likely to be the final word on this troubled chemist who only in exile recognized that his ultrapatriotism—at the expense of everything else, including his Jewish roots and family—counted for nothing in Nazi Germany. Those whom Haber had earlier either neglected or fought against tried to provide a new home for him, possibly in England or Palestine, but he died in Basel not quite sure of his future.

A postscript on the translation...