All modern children have learned at school about the Haber Process to produce ammonia. I wonder how many are told about the fascinating moral dilemmas, personal tragedies, human failings and stunning technical achievements described in this book?
Daniel Charles covers the science in a simple but sound way. Because of Haber, he says, we produce enough food to feed the world. Haber realised that increasing food production will remove the nitrogen in the soil faster than nature can replace it. He seized on what was almost a chance discovery, to design an industrial process to produce nitrogen fertiliser in vast quantities.
That is the good side of Haber's work. His productive period, however, coincided with the growth of modern Germany, still in its ardently patriotic and nationalistic phase. Events were leading inevitably to the First World War and Haber's work was also essential for that. I was astonished to learn that, without the chemicals produced by the Haber Process, Germany would have run out of explosives in the first year of the war.
But the story turns, to our modern attitudes and hindsight, even more dark. Haber not only worked on the choice of gases for use in the trenches, but actually supervised its release. Charles sets this in context and helps us to understand Haber's justifications. In the end though, Haber's work turns grotesquely negative when one of his inventions becomes the foundation for Zyklon-B, used by Hitler to kill his fellow Jews.
This is a very readable book about an intriguing man. The science is well described for a non-scientist reader. For anyone interested in the role of science, and the moral dilemmas it generates, this is required reading.
