User talk:Paul Wormer/scratchbook1

From Citizendium
< User talk:Paul Wormer
Revision as of 10:24, 27 February 2010 by imported>Paul Wormer
Jump to navigation Jump to search


Fritz Haber (9 December 1868, Breslau – 29 January 1934 Basel) was a German chemist and a pioneer of chemical warfare. Haber was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1918 for the synthesis of ammonia from the elements.

Life

Fritz Haber was born into a Jewish family. His father ran a business for fabrics, paints, and drugs. At Fritz's birth, serious complications occurred and his mother died three weeks later. Fritz's father never could overcome his wife's death "for which Fritz was the cause". This led in later life to tensions between father and son.

Haber attended the humanistic gymnasium St. Elizabeth and took the classics (Latin and Greek) plus mathematics branch. Chemistry as an independent subject was not provided. Fritz Haber first studied business but in 1886 he took chemistry in Berlin and at the Heidelberg. Haber received his doctorate in 1891 under Carl Liebermann in Berlin with a thesis entitled On certain derivatives of Piperonal sin organic chemistry. In 1893, he converted to the Protestant-Christian faith against his father's wishes. After a brief spell in industry, he became in 1894 assistant in the Physical Chemistry Institute of the Technical University of Karlsruhe and there he took his habilitation's degree in 1896.

Two years later in 1898, Haber published the textbook "Fundamentals of practical electrochemistry" in Karlsruhe and was appointed extraordinary professor of Chemical Technology. In 1906 he succeeded Max Le Blanc to the chair of Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry in Karlsruhe.

From 1904 on Haber worked on the catalytic formation of ammonia. In 1905 he published his book "Thermodynamics of technical gas reactions", which treats the foundations of his subsequent thermo-chemical work. Haber applied on 13 October 1908 at the German Imperial Patent Office in Berlin for patent regarding a "method for synthetic preparation of ammonia from its elements" that was granted on the 8th of June 1911. Meanwhile, Haber had signed an employee contract with the BASF and you leave the patent to the economic recovery.Cite error: Closing </ref> missing for <ref> tag. From 1919, he tried vainly for six years to win from the sea gold in order to pay the German reparations too. In April 1917 Haber had taken over the management of a technical committee pesticide, which was to deal with the disinfestation of accommodation (bed bugs and lice) and silos (moth). This was done with hydrogen cyanide gas, which was produced in the so-calledproceduraltun, was by sodium cyanide and potassium cyanide placed in an open wooden vat of dilute sulfuric acid. Cite error: Closing </ref> missing for <ref> tag Fritz Haber had since the founding of the IG Farben 1925] in their [[Board].

After the Nazi 1933 at the Kaiser Wilhelm institutes the Aryan paragraph s penetrated and dismissed the Jewish people, which even he could not prevent Haber in May 1933 could be put into retirement. He emigrated in the late fall of 1933 after the Cambridge, where he had not yet received a professorship at the University and died shortly after 1934 on his way through Basel.

Impact

The research results show the Haber Janus-faced of his scientific work: On one hand, through the development of ammonia synthesis (to manufacture explosive) or a technical process for the production and use of poison gas warfare, as it has become possible on an industrial basis. Nor would it be without these skills, the diet of mankind today is not possible. The world annual production of synthesized nitrogen fertilizer is currently more than 100 million tons. Without this production makes possible the Haber-Bosch process accounted for half of the current world population, the food base. [1]

Literature

Zeitung Sunday 41/2008, p.

  • Adolf Henning fruit, Joachim Zepelin:The tragedy of the despised love .In: Mannheimer Forum1994/95. Piper, Munich 1995.
  • Adolf Henning Frucht:Fritz Haber and pest control during the 1st World War II and during the inflation. In:Dahlem Archive discussions. Volume 11, 2005, p. 141-158.
  • ((NDB | 7 | 386 | 389 | Haber, Fritz Jacob | Erna and Johannes Jaenicke))
  • Fritz Richard Stern:Five Germany and a life: memories. Beck, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-406-55811-5.
  • Dietrich Stoltzenberg:Fritz Haber: Chemist, Nobel Laureate, German, Jew. Wiley-VCH, Weinheim, 1998, ISBN 3-527-29573-9.
  • Margit Szollosi-Janze:Fritz Haber. 1868-1934. A Biography. Beck, Munich 1998, ISBN -406-43548-3. Commonscat
  1. Joerg Albrecht:Bread and war from the air.In:[[# Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung Sunday (FAS) | Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung Sunday ]]. 41, 2008, p. 77 (figures from 'Nature Geosience ").