Essays
DOI: 10.1002/anie.201105425 History of Chemistry Fritz Haber: The Damned Scientist** Magda Dunikowska* and Ludwik Turko* ammonia · poison gas · Haber, Fritz · history of science Dedicated to the Fritz Haber Institute, Berlin, on the occasion of its 100th anniversary
A Portrait and a Monograph
The even row of portrait photographs of Lower Silesian Nobel Prize winners displayed on the wall of the club Salon S´ la˛ski, or Silesian Salon, one of the city s magic places, right across the street from the Baroque main building of the Wrocław University, is rather unorthodox as far as the standards of picture exhibitions go. Two of the laureates observe the coy interior of the club having assumed postures that are somewhat unusual for respectable learned men: hanging upside down. One of the two is Philipp Lenard, the
Figure 2. Haber’s portrait, upside down in Salon Slaski.
World War I battlefields. In the gallery of famous people tracing their origins to Wrocław (formally named Breslau), few are as controversial, as complex, or as tragic as Fritz Haber. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1919 for developing a method for the direct synthesis of ammonia Figure 1. Wrocław Salon Slaski interior with Nobel Prize winners. from its elements: hydrogen and nitrogen. The reaction made possible industrial-scale production of artificial fertilizers to provide grain crops with necessary nitrogen. For hundreds of cathode ray discoverer who subsequently developed the millions around the world, the discovery averted the specter conception of creative “Aryan physics” as opposed to of famine and linked Haber s name with the concept of secondary and mendacious “Jewish physics”. The other one “bread from air”. It would be difficult to find a better is Fritz Haber, who invented a method for synthesizing illustration of Alfred Nobel s last will, which instructed his ammonia and later pioneered the use of poison gases on heirs to bestow prizes on those who confer the greatest benefit on mankind. Less than a decade after enabling the production of bread [*] L. Turko from air, Fritz Haber pioneered the use of deadly poison gases Institute of Theoretical Physics, University Wrocław on the battlefields of World War I. He personally oversaw the pl. M. Borna 9, 50-205 Wrocław (Poland) first successful chlorine gas attack on the French and English E-mail: [email protected] lines at Ypres in April 1915. His passion and commitment led M. Dunikowska Wrocław (Poland) to the association of Haber s name with the notion of “poison E-mail: [email protected] from air”. [**] We are grateful for comments and suggestions kindly provided to us The authors of Microcosm: Portrait of a Central European by Gerhard M. Oremek (Frankfurt), Bretislav Friedrich (Berlin), City, Norman Davies and Roger Moorhouse, dot the i s and Adam Jezierski (Wroclaw). cross the t s: “Fritz Haber (1868–1934) … earned the name of
10050 2011 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2011, 50, 10050 – 10062 Germany