Fritz Haber

Fritz Haber PDF Author: Dietrich Stoltzenberg
Publisher: Chemical Heritage Foundation
ISBN: 9780941901246
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
This long-awaited biography of Fritz Haber, now abridged by the author and translated into English, illuminates the life of one of the most gifted yet controversial figures of the 20th century. Haber was a pioneer in electrochemistry and thermodynamics and won the Nobel Prize for his synthesis of ammonia, a process essential for both fertilizer and explosives. His dedication to work spurred his efforts to increase support for scientific study in Germany; yet it also helped cause the breakdown of his two marriages. His ardent patriotism led him to develop chemical weapons for World War I and to try to extract gold from seawater, to help pay for Germany's huge war reparations. Yet Haber, a Jew by birth, was exiled from his homeland in 1933 by the Nazi party and died shortly after.

Fritz Haber

Fritz Haber PDF Author: Dietrich Stoltzenberg
Publisher: Chemical Heritage Foundation
ISBN: 9780941901246
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 360

Get Book Here

Book Description
This long-awaited biography of Fritz Haber, now abridged by the author and translated into English, illuminates the life of one of the most gifted yet controversial figures of the 20th century. Haber was a pioneer in electrochemistry and thermodynamics and won the Nobel Prize for his synthesis of ammonia, a process essential for both fertilizer and explosives. His dedication to work spurred his efforts to increase support for scientific study in Germany; yet it also helped cause the breakdown of his two marriages. His ardent patriotism led him to develop chemical weapons for World War I and to try to extract gold from seawater, to help pay for Germany's huge war reparations. Yet Haber, a Jew by birth, was exiled from his homeland in 1933 by the Nazi party and died shortly after.

Master Mind

Master Mind PDF Author: Daniel Charles
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061871265
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
FRITZ HABER -- a Nobel laureate in chemistry, a friend of Albert Einstein, a German Jew and World War I hero -- may be the most important scientist you have never heard of. The Haber-Bosch process, which he invented at the turn of the twentieth century, revolutionized agriculture by converting nitrogen to fertilizer in quantities massive enough to feed the world. The invention has become an essential pillar for life on earth; some two billion people on our planet could not survive without it. Yet this same process supplied the German military with explosives during World War I, and Haber orchestrated Germany's use of an entirely new weapon -- poison gas. Eventually, Haber's efforts led to Zyklon B, the gas later used to kill millions -- including Haber's own relatives -- in Nazi concentration camps. Haber is the patron saint of guns and butter, a scientist whose discoveries transformed the way we produce food and fight wars. His legacy is filled with contradictions, as was his personality. For some, he was a benefactor of humanity and devoted friend. For others, he was a war criminal, possessed by raw ambition. An intellectual gunslinger, enamored of technical progress and driven by patriotic devotion to Germany, he was instrumental in the scientific work that inadvertently supported the Nazi cause; a Jew and a German patriot, he was at once an enabler of the Nazi regime and its victim. Master Mind is a thought-provoking biography of this controversial scientist, a modern Faust who personifies the paradox of science, its ability to create and to destroy. It offers a complete chronicle of his tumultuous and ultimately tragic life, from his childhood and rise to prominence in the heady days of the German Empire to his disgrace and exile at the hands of the Nazis; from early decades as the hero who eliminated the threat of starvation to his lingering legacy as a villain whose work led to the demise of millions.

Einstein's German World

Einstein's German World PDF Author: Fritz Stern
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691214069
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 351

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Book Description
The French political philosopher Raymond Aron once observed that the twentieth century "could have been Germany's century." In 1900, the country was Europe's preeminent power, its material strength and strident militaristic ethos apparently balanced by a vital culture and extraordinary scientific achievement. It was poised to achieve greatness. In Einstein's German World, the eminent historian Fritz Stern explores the ambiguous promise of Germany before Hitler, as well as its horrifying decline into moral nihilism under Nazi rule, and aspects of its remarkable recovery since World War II. He does so by gracefully blending history and biography in a sequence of finely drawn studies of Germany's great scientists and of German-Jewish relations before and during Hitler's regime. Stern's central chapter traces the complex friendship of Albert Einstein and the Nobel Prize-winning chemist Fritz Haber, contrasting their responses to German life and to their Jewish heritage. Haber, a convert to Christianity and a firm German patriot until the rise of the Nazis; Einstein, a committed internationalist and pacifist, and a proud though secular Jew. Other chapters, also based on new archival sources, consider the turbulent and interrelated careers of the physicist Max Planck, an austere and powerful figure who helped to make Berlin a happy, productive place for Einstein and other legendary scientists; of Paul Ehrlich, the founder of chemotherapy; of Walther Rathenau, the German-Jewish industrialist and statesman tragically assassinated in 1922; and of Chaim Weizmann, chemist, Zionist, and first president of Israel, whose close relations with his German colleagues is here for the first time recounted. Stern examines the still controversial way that historians have dealt with World War I and Germans have dealt with their nation's defeat, and he analyzes the conflicts over the interpretations of Germany's past that persist to this day. He also writes movingly about the psychic cost of Germany's reunification in 1990, the reconciliation between Germany and Poland, and the challenges and prospects facing Germany today. At once historical and personal, provocative and accessible, Einstein's German World illuminates the issues that made Germany's and Europe's past and present so important in a tumultuous century of creativity and violence.

Between Genius And Genocide

Between Genius And Genocide PDF Author: Daniel Charles
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1446468844
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
In January 1934, as Hitler's shadow began to fall across Europe, a short, bald man carrying a German passport arrived at the Hotel Euler in Basle. He seemed haunted and restless, as though he urgently needed to be elsewhere. Fritz Haber, Nobel laureate in chemistry, confidante of Albert Einstein and German war hero, had arrived in Basle a broken man and, three days later, he died leaving an uncertain legacy. For some, the great German chemist was a benefactor of humanity, winner of a Nobel prize for inventing a way to nourish farmers' fields with nitrogen captured from the air. For others, he was a war criminal who personally supervised the unleashing of chlorine clouds against British, French and Canadian troops in World War I. Tragedy marked his life. A week after the first gas attack in 1915, Haber's wife took his pistol and shot herself. And in 1933, when Hitler came to power, 'the Jew Haber' was among the first scientists driven out of Germany. Within a year, Haber was dead - denied honour both in his homeland and abroad. No life reveals the moral paradox of science - its capacity to create and destroy - more clearly than Fritz Haber's. Between Genius and Genocide is a story filled with ambition, patriotism, hubris and tragedy, set amidst huge technological advances, arms races, mounting imperialism and war.

Transnational Nazism

Transnational Nazism PDF Author: Ricky W. Law
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108474632
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 361

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Book Description
The first English-language study of German-Japanese interwar relations to employ sources in both languages.

Robert Le Rossignol

Robert Le Rossignol PDF Author: Deri Sheppard
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030297144
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 552

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Book Description
A principal aim of this first biography of Robert Le Rossignol, engineer of the Haber process, is to bring new evidence to the attention of the scientific community allowing a re-assessment of the origins of the 'Haber' process. However, the scope of the book is much wider and goes beyond the discovery of 'fixation' to account for a life distinct from Haber, one full of remarkable science, cruel circumstance, personal tragedy and amazing benevolence, the latter made possible by Haber’s generous financial arrangement with Le Rossignol regarding his royalties from the BASF.

Chemistry, 1901-1921

Chemistry, 1901-1921 PDF Author:
Publisher: World Scientific
ISBN: 9789810234058
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 438

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Book Description
A collection of the Nobel Lectures delivered by the prizewinners in chemistry, together with their biographies, portraits and the presentation speeches.

The Nobel Prize

The Nobel Prize PDF Author: Burton Feldman
Publisher: Arcade Publishing
ISBN: 9781559705929
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 520

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Book Description
Discusses the Nobel Institution in detail, telling about the award and its beginnings, what it means to win a Nobel Prize, the fields in which it is presented, who judges and how the prize is awarded, and more.

One Hundred Years at the Intersection of Chemistry and Physics

One Hundred Years at the Intersection of Chemistry and Physics PDF Author: Jeremiah James
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 311023954X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 325

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Book Description
This volume, occasioned by the centenary of the Fritz Haber Institute, formerly the Institute for Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry, covers the institute's scientific and institutional history from its founding until the present. The institute was among the earliest established by the Kaiser Wilhelm Society, and its inauguration was one of the first steps in the development of Berlin-Dahlem into a center for scientific research. Its establishment was made possible by an endowment from Leopold Koppel, granted on the condition that Fritz Haber, well-known for his discovery of a method to synthesize ammonia from its elements, be made its director. The history of the institute has largely paralleled that of 20th-century Germany. It undertook controversial weapons research during World War I, followed by a "Golden Era" during the 1920s, in spite of financial hardships. Under the National Socialists it experienced a purge of its scientific staff and a diversion of its research into the service of the new regime, accompanied by a breakdown in its international relations. In the immediate aftermath of World War II it suffered crippling material losses, from which it recovered slowly in the post-war era. In 1953, shortly after taking the name of its founding director, the institute joined the fledgling Max Planck Society. During the 1950s and 60s, the institute supported diverse researches into the structure of matter and electron microscopy in a territorially insular and politically precarious West-Berlin. In subsequent decades, as both Berlin and the Max Planck Society underwent significant changes, the institute reorganized around a board of coequal scientific directors and a renewed focus on the investigation of elementary processes on surfaces and interfaces, topics of research that had been central to the work of Fritz Haber and the first "Golden Era" of the institute.

One Hundred Years of Chemical Warfare: Research, Deployment, Consequences

One Hundred Years of Chemical Warfare: Research, Deployment, Consequences PDF Author: Bretislav Friedrich
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319516647
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 404

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Book Description
This book is open access under a CC BY-NC 2.5 license. On April 22, 1915, the German military released 150 tons of chlorine gas at Ypres, Belgium. Carried by a long-awaited wind, the chlorine cloud passed within a few minutes through the British and French trenches, leaving behind at least 1,000 dead and 4,000 injured. This chemical attack, which amounted to the first use of a weapon of mass destruction, marks a turning point in world history. The preparation as well as the execution of the gas attack was orchestrated by Fritz Haber, the director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry in Berlin-Dahlem. During World War I, Haber transformed his research institute into a center for the development of chemical weapons (and of the means of protection against them). Bretislav Friedrich and Martin Wolf (Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society, the successor institution of Haber’s institute) together with Dieter Hoffmann, Jürgen Renn, and Florian Schmaltz (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science) organized an international symposium to commemorate the centenary of the infamous chemical attack. The symposium examined crucial facets of chemical warfare from the first research on and deployment of chemical weapons in WWI to the development and use of chemical warfare during the century hence. The focus was on scientific, ethical, legal, and political issues of chemical weapons research and deployment — including the issue of dual use — as well as the ongoing effort to control the possession of chemical weapons and to ultimately achieve their elimination. The volume consists of papers presented at the symposium and supplemented by additional articles that together cover key aspects of chemical warfare from 22 April 1915 until the summer of 2015.