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Technology and Culture 47.4 (2006) 835-837


Reviewed by
Jeffrey Allan Johnson
Master Mind: The Rise and Fall of Fritz Haber, the Nobel Laureate Who Launched the Age of Chemical Warfare. By Daniel Charles. New York: HarperCollins, 2005. Pp. xvii+313. $24.95.

Fritz Haber's life could be made into a blockbuster Hollywood movie, a Faustian epic played out against the background of some of the greatest horrors of the twentieth century, from the First World War to the Holocaust: a young German-Jewish chemist, torn between idealism and opportunism, endures years of frustration punctuated by breakdowns, but finally wins a prestigious appointment as director of a new research institute after a great [End Page 835] technical achievement—the synthesis of ammonia under heat and pressure—that when developed by the BASF corporation as the Haber-Bosch process will make possible the mass production of nitrogen fertilizer, thus saving millions from starvation. After 1914, however, it becomes a source of nitrogen compounds for German munitions, thus killing millions, while Haber devotes his talents to chemical warfare, hoping to bring German victory. When he returns home to celebrate his initial success in 1915, his spouse Clara, herself an idealistic chemist turned depressed housewife, commits suicide with his service revolver. After Germany loses the war, Haber is almost simultaneously awarded the Nobel Prize and labeled a war criminal; avoiding prosecution, he spends years vainly attempting to extract gold from seawater to pay off German reparations, meanwhile fos-tering covert efforts, in violation of the Versailles Treaty, to maintain German expertise in chemical warfare. One such initiative involves a civilian pesticide company, staffed by chemical-warfare veterans and using "Zyklon B," a cyanide-based spin-off of an agent developed in Haber's institute. Ultimately it will be used in Auschwitz, where several of Haber's own relatives will die. By that time, however, Haber himself is long dead. Aged by defeat, postwar failure, divorce from his second wife, and financial losses in the Great Depression, he is broken by the National Socialist takeover of 1933. Resigning his directorship in futile protest, he leaves his beloved Germany for an uncertain future, returning to the Jewish identity he tried to abandon in his youth. He considers a position in Palestine or one at Cambridge University, but instead dies an exile in Switzerland, his broken heart finally giving out in January 1934.

This is the story Daniel Charles has tried to capture in Master Mind. Although it breaks no new scholarly ground, it is a good read, with thoughtful reflections on Haber's personality and on the implications of his work. Charles acknowledges his debt to the impressive Haber Collection in Berlin, assembled by Haber's associate Johannes Jaenicke, and to two massive German biographies based on it: Dietrich Stoltzenberg's Fritz Haber: Chemist, Nobel Laureate, German, Jew (2004; translation of the 1994 German edition), and especially Margit Szöllösi-Janze's Fritz Haber, 1868– 1934: Eine Biographie (1998), which is better and even longer, but unfortunately not yet available in English. Charles has effectively used these and other sources to produce a good overview of Haber's life and work. As a science writer interested in agricultural technology, Charles also goes beyond the German biographies by examining (in chapter 7) the "green revolution" resulting from the mass production of nitrogen fertilizer made possible by Haber's ammonia synthesis, with its benefits to humanity yet destructive implications for global ecosystems.

The book is not without flaws. In the interest of brevity, Charles often omits specifics that would interest a scholar, and his lack of historical expertise occasionally leads to errors. For example, in criticizing Haber's [End Page 836] rationalization for introducing poison gas, he refers to an "untrue rumor" circulating on the German side that "France had already begun using gas—though ineffectually" (p. 157). In fact, the rumor was true (although the gas was not poisonous), as Olivier Lepick (not cited by...

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