The Alchemy of Air: A Jewish Genius, a Doomed Tycoon, and the Scientific Discovery That Fed the World but Fueled the Rise of Hitler

50% of the nitrogen in our bodies came from the Haber–Bosch process. It’s in every protein and every strand of DNA. Ponder that — “half of the nitrogen in your blood, your skin and hair, your proteins and DNA, is synthetic.”I just finished Hager’s Alchemy of Air, the story of “the most important discovery ever made. See if you can think of another that ranks with it in terms of life-and-death importance for the largest number of people. Put simply, this discovery is keeping alive half the people on earth.”The Haber-Bosch process catalyzes the production of ammonia (NH3) from N2 and H2 gas. We need “fixed nitrogen”, available to our organic chemistries as atomic nitrogen. It is the limiting factor for the growth of all food. While nitrogen gas is about 80% of our atmosphere, not one atom of it is available for our use when tightly bound by the triple bond of N2 gas, the strongest chemical bond in nature. It is sequestered all around us. In nature, N2 is liberated to atomic nitrogen in small amounts by lightning strikes (it needs 1000°C) and slowly by nitrogen-fixing bacteria in the soil. Hager argues that if we reverted to relying on just those natural sources, three billion people would die of starvation in short order — our soils simply could not produce enough food for the mouths now on Earth.Historically, fixed nitrogen came from manure and compost, the first supply to be used up. Once local bat caves were depleted, the world looked for new sources. In 1850, the Chinchas Islands off the coast of Pisco, Peru became the most valuable real estate on Earth. They were covered by centuries of bird guano, excavated by slave labor in a hellish scene. Guano became 75% of the GDP of Peru by 1859. But the world wanted more. In 1856, the U.S. passed the Guano Islands Act, whereby anyone could annex a guano island they found anywhere in the world and make it a U.S. territory. Then the Guano War of 1863 broke out between Spain and Peru and Chile. Darwin had discovered peculiar nitrate deposits in high Atacama Desert of Chile. And by 1900, Chile was supplying 2/3 of all fertilizer on Earth. The Chilean harbor was the location of the first major sea battle of World War I, between France and Germany. The nitrate supply was essential to war-making. “They later called World War I the chemist’s war.” As we saw in the massive explosion recently in Lebanon, fixed nitrogen can also be used to make explosives or provide the “N” in TNT or nitroglycerine.As a latecomer to the nationhood, Germany did not have colonies to exploit for food or fuel, and their shipping lanes were vulnerable to foreclosure by the British navy. Germany’s chemical companies undertook a major effort to pull fixed nitrogen from the air, to support local food production and the munitions of war. “BASF’s nitrogen project grew into the biggest scientific effort in history, comparable in scale to the Manhattan Project in WWII.” The goal was to find a catalyst that could assist with the required chemistries by reducing the temperature and pressure required to something that could be economically feasible in an industrial plant. After 20,000 experiments, running through the periodic table, they discovered osmium could do the trick, and BASF cornered the market for this rare element, but even that would not be enough for the volumes needed. Then they found uranium, and finally, a more reasonable iron-aluminum-calcium combination. The factories required staggeringly huge pressure vessels, like had never seen before.We use the same catalysts today, in a codependency with the petrochemical economy of byproducts and waste heat. The Haber process consumes 4% of the world's natural-gas production and 1.5% of the world's energy supply.Half of the nitrogen in fertilizer is taken up by plants, much of the rest washes out. Fertilizer runoff from the Mississippi river has doubled nitrates in the the Gulf of Mexico, making it look like chocolate milk with an enormous Dead Zone. In Europe, the annual 1.5b tons of nitrogen fertilizer runoff from the Rhine has made the Baltic Sea one of the most polluted marine systems on Earth.Even our atmosphere has become a “huge fertilizer silo, with tons of growth-promoting fertilizers showering from the sky. The amount of fixed nitrogen filtering down to earth in some places has risen so high that it equals the amount American farmers typically apply to their spring wheat.” Nitrogen oxides also create acid rain.We have become dependent on fertilizer. To recap, “while the population nearly quadrupled during the twentieth century, food production — thanks first to Haber-Bosch, second to improved genetic strains of rice and wheat — increased more than sevenfold. That is the simple math behind today’s era of plenty.”

Thomas Hager’s book, The Alchemy of Air, is an extraordinary book that is both fascinating and instructive . It focuses largely on Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch. Both became Nobel Laureates. Haber was the utterly brilliant chemist who created the process that made it possible to create synthetic nitrogen fertilizer out of air when supplies of natural fertilizer from Peru and Chile were beginning to diminish, thereby threatening the world with catastrophic famines. In addition to fertilizers, synthetic ammonia products were also the basis of explosives. Haber’s discovery provided Germany with both the food and the explosives that enabled Germany to stay in WW I for four years; Without it Germany would have had to surrender after about two years. It is estimated that up to half of the world's population is alive because of Haber's devvelopment of synthetic fertlizer.Haber also invented the poison gas that was first launched at the Allies at the Second Battle of Ypres on April 22, 1915. The Allied forces were unprepared for the attack in which 10,000 are said to have perished. Haber developed the gas and also the method of delivery. He calculated when the wind would blow the gas away from the German lines and toward the Allied lines. Haber also developed Zyklon A, out of which Zyklon B, the gas used by the Germans in WWII to exterminate the Jews. Both Bosch and Haber were important scientists at BASF before I. G. Farben, the great German conglomerate, was created. Bosch was able to design and have constructed the huge factory that made the mass production of ammontia economically feasible. Without his practical implementation, the Haber discovery would have been economically useless. BASF’s original factory site was at Ludwigshafen. During the early part of WW I, the French were able to bomb Ludwigshafen even with their primitive planes. Bosch created a new site, Leuna, which was far less accessible to French bombers. In WW II, another Farben product. Leunabenzin, synthetric gasoline, enabled Germany to stay in the war in spite of the diminution of supplies of natural petroleum products. During WW II allied, mostly American, bombers bombed Leuna as the key to taking Germany out of the war.When I. G. Farben was originally formed in 1925, Bosch became its head, In the late 1930s Farben was the world's largest chemical corporation and the world's fourth largest corporation., In addition to BASF, Farben's component corpoations included Hoest, Bayer, Agfa, Fritz Haber (1868-1934) was born Jewish in what was then Breslau and is now Wroclaw in Poland. He converted to Lutheranism. Both of his wives were born Jewish but converted as a condition of marriage. About twenty per cent of BASF-Farben’s scientists, before Hitler, were Jewish as were a number of members of the governing board. Bosch was not a Nazi. He tried unsuccessfully to retain the Jewish scientists. He was more helpful in finding work for them outside of Germany. Farben was speedily Nazified. Bosch ended up an emotional wreck who drank too much after attempting to appease the Nazis while attempting to get his Jewish scientists out of Germany.Both Haber and Bosch were utter geniuses. I did not realize the crucial importance of Farben before reading this book.I knew it was important. In reality it was crucial to Germany's war effort in both wars. One of Farben's corporations during WW II was I.G. Auschwitz which produced buna, synthetic rubber, using Jewish slave labor which were worked to death and then replaced by other slave laborers who were similarly worked to death. After the war, the Allies put an end to Farben although its component parts have flourished. Haber was regarded as a Jew by the Nazis although he had been a passionate German nationalist.It can be argued that Haber was the most important scientist of the first half of the twentieth century because of his creation of synthetic fertilizer, It can be argued that he was one of the most destructive because of his contributions to German weaponry. In 1933, he left Germany for Cambridge where Lord Rutherford, Britain's leading physicist, refused to shake his hand,According to Hager, the huge jump in the world’s population since 1900 was due to the work of Haber and Bosch. Without it, there would have been at least 40% fewer people in the world. Thus, Haber was one of the most important scientists of the twentieth century. Without his discoveries and Bosch’s productive implementation, there would have been catastrophic Malthusian famines. But, Haber who enabled so many to live was also the inventor of the poison gas that killed many. He created zyklon a; zyklon b was used by the Nazis in their death camps. In spite of his desire to serve Germany, the Nazis wanted him out and disgraced. He was a Jew.Religious conversion meant nothing to the Nazis.

A superb recount of the Haber-Bosch process to manufacture ammonia. Few men had an impact on the world as these guys. Congratulations to the author.

I first came across parts of this story in Sam Keans excellent “Caesars Last Breath”.Thomas Hager tells the full depth of Fritz Habers “discovery” and Carl Bosch’s engineering prowess with fascinating detail and fluidity.We start with the Malthusian ideology - the world doesn’t have enough land to sustain growing populations and famines were seen as an inevitably. Hence the growth of colonial empires seeking land for food and their peoples. The discovery of guano and the Chilean saltpetre is a well told introduction.What impressed me most about this book is the author is not afraid to shy away from some of the technical details, really shining a light on the continued improvements Carl Bosch made on the process engineering process and his team made in finding the best and cheapest catalyst for the process of ammonia production.Where the story becomes intertwined with history is just fascinating. BASF, a due company, has plenty of chlorine which Fritz Haber puts to ill use in the trenches of WW1. The company becomes a munitions manufacturer using the nitrates from the H-B process.After WW1, BASF merges with others in IG Farben, literally translating into “in the interest of dye companies”. Yet, it was Bosch and his interest in synfuels that provoked the next wave of Nazi interest, allowing it to be almost self sufficient in gasoline or Leunabenzein (for those interested in learning more about the oil industry, Hitlers obsession with oil and why he headed for Stalingrad and not Moscow, read “The Prize”).The personal lives of Haber and Bosch are well documented, intertwining with other scientific celebrities of the day such as Einstein and Planck. Habers struggles with German pride and his own Jewish past are well told as are Boschs personal conflict on increasing industrial prowess with his underlying disturbance at war and conflict.This is an impressive book, well researched on what just be one of the greatest - or at least important - stories in science.My only qualm is that is current worldly implications of artificial fertiliser are summarised rather hastily at the end, but for a 270 page book it packs plenty of weight at a good pace.A book that I will refer back to again and again.

This is a fascinating study of two German chemists, Haber and Bosch, who played central roles in two of the great dramas of the twentieth century. Haver devised and Bosch implemented the invention that bears their names that made fixed nitrogen, so plentiful in our atmosphere, accessible for the production of fertilizer without which the planet could not support anywhere near it's current population. On the other hand they were instrumental in the German effort in both World Wars: Haber devised and enthusiastically promoted the use of deadly chlorine gas weapons in WW1 while Bosch engineered the mass production of synthetic fuel essential to Hitler's war effort.A skilful presentation of complex issues. Recommended.

The Alchemy of AirIt is ironic that the man whose self-imposed mission to save Germany, economically and militarily, was a German Jew. He invented the process for fixing nitrogen which is still dominant in the chemical industry a century later. He invented poison gas. And he tried unsuccessfully to extract gold from seawater in order to pay his country's reparations. The author of this biography of Fritz Haber (1868 - 1934) studiously avoids the use of all chemical terms and explanations which, as a chemist, I found irritating, but Hager writes so well that I found the book compulsive reading. Required reading for all students of the history of technology - and twentieth century European history generally.Readers who want the chemistry too should buy The World's Greatest Fix: a History of Nitrogen and Agriculture by G.J. Leigh (1994).Alan E. Comyns

This is spellbinding. So much on the history of human population growth that I doubt many know. Gloriously written and so wide ranging, you could say you’d read any number of different book topics, such is the breadth on offer.A treat in every sense.

The pace of the book is reasonably fast, and gives a very interesting overview. The pace is complimented by the writing style, which is not too ornate. There is a decent balance between description of events and the authors interpretation and speculation (of motives, etc.).I would recommend this book to anyone interested in history of science; although, for those with more chemistry and/or engineering knowledge, this book does not explore those aspects of the story in any great depth, and as such may not satisfy those interests.