<i>"Billions of people would not exist without him. And yet without him, World War I would have ended years earlier"</i><p>The article is very interesting, but there is this Hollywood simplistic approach where one man is responsible for all things. The text even mention the Allies developing a poison gas, why not other German chemic? No one other person would be able to discover how to produce amonia? I don't subscribe to this way of looking into historical figures.<p>Nevertheless, a great text.
There is an incredible book about this topic called "The Alchemy of Air"@, which I highly recommend. It's one of the best non-fiction science books I've ever read. Also available on Audible.<p>Fritz Haber's life story is intertwined with Einstein's and the book pairs extremely well with Walter Isaacson's Einstein biography, which is a MUST read (or audiobook listen).<p>@ - <i>Full title: "The Alchemy of Air: A Jewish Genius, a Doomed Tycoon, and the Scientific Discovery That Fed the World but Fueled the Rise of Hitler"</i>
I don't think that his involvements in WW I are justified by his achievements in chemistry in favor of world population problems. Someone else would have found a way to bind nitrogen without him and so feed billions of people in the end. Much later perhaps, but eventually still. Yet, most of today's populus have barely enough to eat. So, ultimataly the problem remains unsolved, or it shifted even.<p>Haber was not a solution. He was as tragic and as fanatic as everybody else in Europe at that time. Nazi Germany also have invented A LOT of world changing things. They solved a lot of problems. Yet, they managed to do such unspeakable things that all the good stuff instantly fades.<p>In my humble opinion, it's not difficult to judge a person who commits unspeakable crimes by his good or bad deeds. Good deeds are optional, always. Bad deeds are never an option, regardless of eventual outcomes or consequences.
What an insane and fascinating read. Two things occured to me:<p>I don’t really understand how and why war happens. Like, it starts out as two parties both wanting the same resource, and then somebody says “over my dead body” or something and then a million other people decide to also join in this fight? I do not get it.<p>The other thing is : The “inherent harm of technology”. Every single advancement will 100% hurt someone. In this case it hurt a lot of people. But it’s impossible to stop progress, even if you keep a discovery secret for a while, it won’t last. Humanity will advance, and somewhat destroy itself in the process.
If you're interested in this, RadioLab did a great episode on good and evil and really took note of Fritz Haber. It's called The Bad Show. Fritz Haber was a really conflicting character, he seemed extremely patriotic and made a lot of personal sacrifices for his country.<p>Every time I see someone who is described like that, I have to wonder how much of the disdain we have for him is because that wasn't our country? If we had a brilliant man who invented a solution to the worldwide fear of an impending food shortage, but they also made a disturbing wartime weapon, would we feel the same way?
> The amount of crops one can grow is directly tied to how much nitrogen can be provided.<p>This is only half true. You also needed to breed new crop varieties that were able to put all that abundance of nitrogen to good use. Older crops varieties, adapted to grow well in the less nitrogen-rich soils, would not simply double their output even when given double nitrogen.<p>So there is another man, plant breeder Norman Borlaug, who is equally responsible for feeding most of our 8 billion people today.<p><a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-macaray/the-man-who-saved-a-billi_b_4099523.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-macaray/the-man-who-sav...</a>
Wow, the article is full of just enough half-truths that I wonder what its real intent was. You get the impression from it that Germany was the first to use chemical weapons in the Great War — but it wasn't: France started, with the use of tear gas.<p>Use of gas projectors did not violate the 1899 Hague Declaration against use of gas-filled projectiles. Use of irritants like chlorine arguably didn't violate the 1904 Hague Convention on use of poison or poisoned weapons (is an irritant a poison? does dosage matter?).<p>The first German use of chemical weapons (tear gas, again) was on the Eastern Front, near Warsaw, not at Ypres. I don't know if the use of chlorine at Ypres was intended as an irritant or a poison — it's been too long since I studied the history.<p>> As Germany’s population grew along with their economy, the newly formed country became ambitious. The decision was made to further their status in the world by attacking France through Belgium.<p>That's a description of the beginning of the Great War so short that it's a lie. It's not as though the Germans woke up one morning and thought, 'hey, let's invade France!' The reason Germany attacked France was that Russia had mobilised on her eastern borders, while France was mobilising to her west (and the belief was that France was the far deadlier foe). This was in an era in which a mobilised army was believed to mean almost certain victory. And the reason that Germany invaded Belgium was that the French frontier was too heavily fortified. As it turned out, that was a good operational decision but an extraordinarily poor strategic one: while the German Army almost got to Paris, violation of Belgian neutrality led to Britain's entry into the war.
> Billions of people would not exist without him<p>As if this is a gift. A big assumption to make. More and more, I am taking to the anti-natalist viewpoint.
The great Vaclav Smil wrote about the Haber process and its relationship to world population in a Scientific American article in 1997:<p><a href="http://vaclavsmil.com/wp-content/uploads/Smil_SciAm_N2cycle.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://vaclavsmil.com/wp-content/uploads/Smil_SciAm_N2cycle....</a> [PDF]<p>It sort of blew my mind when I read it back then
Haber was a true giant.<p>Nobody out people there would've lived without him inventing a process that lead to first generation chemical fertilizers.<p>An invention I rank second to invention of fire in history of our species.<p>(third being the metallurgy)<p>Yet, the man is unknown to non-chemist, and some anthropologists
Did Erling Johnson's work build on this?<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrophosphate_process" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrophosphate_process</a>
> Fritz Haber set that future by on a different course by solving one of the greatest problems humanity ever faced: How to feed the world.<p>He didn't solve it. He just delayed the problem for a while. Solving it requires stopping the exponential growth of the human population.