- Person
- Fritz Haber
- Lived
- 1868–1934
- Field
- Chemistry
- From
- German
The story
Fritz Haber, born in 1868 into a Jewish family in Breslau, joined the technical university in Karlsruhe in 1894 as an assistant to Hans Bunte, an expert in combustion chemistry. Another colleague, Carl Engler, introduced him to the study of petroleum. Haber's first major research, on the decomposition and combustion of hydrocarbons, became his 1896 habilitation thesis and established a classic result about the stability of carbon bonds in different kinds of hydrocarbons.
Over the next decade he studied gases from many angles. He did fundamental research on the Bunsen flame, showing that a water-gas equilibrium is established in its luminous inner cone, which led to a chemical method of measuring flame temperatures. He studied the loss of energy in steam engines, turbines and fuel-driven motors, and found a fundamental solution for the laboratory combustion of carbon monoxide and hydrogen.
In 1905 he brought this work together in Thermodynamik technischer Gasreaktionen, translated into English in 1908 as Thermodynamics of Technical Gas-Reactions: Seven Lectures. The book applied the laws of thermodynamics to the reactions that mattered most to industry, showing how to work out which products would form, and in what proportions, under given conditions of temperature and pressure. It was later regarded as a model of accuracy and critical insight in the field of chemical thermodynamics.
The book also recorded the production of small amounts of ammonia from nitrogen and hydrogen at 1,000 °C with an iron catalyst. That observation set Haber on the path to his ammonia synthesis. Higher pressures and lower temperatures favour ammonia, provided a catalyst can speed up the reaction, and in 1909, working with Robert Le Rossignol at about 500 °C and up to 200 atmospheres with a suitable catalyst, he succeeded. The achievement brought him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 1918.
Meanwhile his standing grew. In 1906 he was appointed 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 the new Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry.
Why it matters
Haber's book showed how thermodynamics could guide industrial chemistry, an approach central to the design of chemical processes ever since.
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 linked electrochemistry to industryFritz Haber's 1898 textbook on technical electrochemistry and his discovery that controlling electrode potential yields specific products became classics of the field.
- 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 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 Wikipedia
- Fritz Haber: Biographical NobelPrize.org
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.