🪴 GoDeep
Search
← University Challenge
Portrait of Fritz Haber

Science · Chemistry

Fritz Haber

1868–1934 · German

Physical chemistry; electrochemistry

Fritz Haber was a German chemist who developed the synthesis of ammonia from nitrogen and hydrogen, the basis of the Haber–Bosch process that makes nitrogen fertilisers and feeds a large share of humanity. He won the 1918 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, but is also called the father of chemical warfare for directing Germany's chlorine gas attacks in the First World War. Of Jewish birth, he left Germany in 1933 and died in Basel the following year.

How to spot them

  • ▸Ammonia synthesis from atmospheric nitrogen; 'bread from air'
  • ▸Chlorine gas at the Second Battle of Ypres, 1915; 'father of chemical warfare'
  • ▸His wife Clara Immerwahr, a chemist, who killed herself in 1915
  • ▸The Born–Haber cycle; attempts to extract gold from seawater
  • ▸Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin-Dahlem, now named after him

Key discoveries & works

Synthesis of ammonia from nitrogen and hydrogen over a catalyst (1909)

Demonstrated with Robert Le Rossignol; scaled up industrially by Carl Bosch at BASF

Chlorine gas attack at the Second Battle of Ypres (1915)

He organised and supervised the first large-scale use of poison gas, on 22 April 1915

Born–Haber cycle (1919)

Thermochemical cycle, devised with Max Born, for calculating lattice energies of ionic solids

Attempt to extract gold from seawater (1920s)

An unsuccessful scheme to help Germany pay its war reparations

Key ideas

  • Fixed atmospheric nitrogen on an industrial scale, ending dependence on Chilean saltpetre and guano for fertilisers and explosives
  • Haber's rule in toxicology: the effect of a toxic gas depends on concentration multiplied by exposure time

Quick-fire facts

  • •Born in Breslau, Prussia (now Wrocław, Poland)
  • •Awarded the 1918 Nobel Prize in Chemistry (presented in 1919) for the synthesis of ammonia from its elements
  • •His wife Clara Immerwahr, the first woman to gain a chemistry doctorate at the University of Breslau, shot herself in May 1915
  • •Directed the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry in Berlin-Dahlem, now the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society
  • •Research at his institute led to Zyklon pesticides; Zyklon B was later used by the Nazis in the death camps
  • •Converted from Judaism to Christianity, but resigned in 1933 in protest at Nazi anti-Jewish laws
  • •Died in Basel, Switzerland, in 1934

Drill it — 7 cards

1 / 7new card

Sources