- Person
- Fritz Haber
- Lived
- 1868–1934
- Field
- Chemistry
- From
- German
The story
Fritz Haber, born in 1868 into a Jewish family in Breslau, trained as an organic chemist and spent several restless years in his father's dye business and in short laboratory posts. In 1894 he became an assistant to Hans Bunte at the technical university in Karlsruhe, where colleagues interested in fuels and petroleum shaped his early research. There he taught himself the young discipline of physical chemistry.
In 1897 he travelled to learn about the latest developments in electrochemistry, a field he had been exploring with a fellow lecturer, Hans Luggin, who taught its theory. In 1898 he published Grundriss der technischen Elektrochemie auf theoretischer Grundlage, an outline of technical electrochemistry built on theoretical foundations, based on his lectures at Karlsruhe. In its preface he set out his intention to relate chemical research to industrial processes, and he thanked Luggin. The book attracted considerable attention, and in December that year Haber was made an associate professor.
The same year he reported his work on electrolytic oxidation and reduction. He showed that definite reduction products can be obtained if the potential at the cathode is kept constant. He explained the stepwise reduction of nitrobenzene at the cathode, which became the model for other similar reduction processes.
Over the following decade Haber produced many more electrochemical studies. His work on reversible and irreversible electrochemical reduction is considered a classic in the field. He also investigated the passivity of metals and the effect of electric current on the corrosion of metals, explained autoxidation in electrochemical terms, and studied the electrolysis of solid salts, research that helped lead to the glass electrode for measuring acidity.
These achievements made his reputation. In 1906 he was appointed full professor of physical chemistry and electrochemistry at Karlsruhe and director of its institute for those subjects, and in 1911 he moved to Berlin to lead a new Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry. The idea at the heart of his 1898 work was that careful control of electrode potential lets chemists choose which product they make.
Why it matters
Controlled-potential methods pioneered by Haber remain basic tools of electrochemistry, used in industrial synthesis and laboratory analysis.
About Fritz Haber
Nobel chemist whose ammonia synthesis made the fertilisers that feed billions, who also led Germany’s WWI poison-gas programme, and who was driven out by the Nazis.
More about Fritz Haber
- Fritz Haber's surface idea inspired LangmuirFritz Haber observed that the adsorbing power of a solid can come from unsaturated valence forces on its surface, an idea on which Irving Langmuir founded his theory of adsorption.
- Haber–Bosch fertiliser helps feed half the worldScaled up by Carl Bosch from 1913, Fritz Haber's ammonia process made cheap fertiliser possible. Food grown with it is estimated to support nearly half the world's population.
- Fritz Haber co-invented the glass electrodeWith his colleague Cremer, Fritz Haber invented the glass electrode for measuring the acidity of liquids, a device his Nobel biography describes as now widely used.
- Fritz Haber rebuilt his institute into a world centreIn the 1920s Fritz Haber reorganised his Berlin-Dahlem institute, giving directors such as James Franck and Michael Polanyi full freedom and making it an international centre of science.
- Fritz Haber invented a whistle to protect minersIn 1913 Fritz Haber unveiled a firedamp whistle that used sound to warn miners of explosive methane, and he also devised a quartz-thread gauge for very low gas pressures.
- Fritz Haber made ammonia from the air in 1909In 1909 Fritz Haber and Robert Le Rossignol became the first to synthesise ammonia from nitrogen and hydrogen, solving a problem chemists had pursued for decades.
- Fritz Haber wrote a model book on gas reactionsFritz Haber's 1905 book Thermodynamics of Technical Gas Reactions was later regarded as a model of accuracy and critical insight in chemical thermodynamics.
- Fritz Haber resigned rather than dismiss his Jewish staffOrdered by the Nazis in 1933 to dismiss Jewish employees, Fritz Haber tried to delay their departures until he could find them places, then resigned himself.
Sources
- Fritz Haber: Biographical NobelPrize.org
- Fritz Haber Wikipedia
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