A veteran science and medical writer, THOMAS HAGER is the author of The Demon Under the Microscope; Force of Nature- The Life of Linus Pauling; and more than a hundred news and feature articles in Reader's Digest, Journal of the American Medical Association, and many other publications.
Named one of the Best Books of 2008 by Kirkus Reviews
"Make[s] the scientific process as suspenseful as a good
whodunit."
—Oregonian
"[A] smooth, well-researched book that reads like a fast-paced
novel."
—News & Observer (Raleigh)
"This scientific adventure spans two world wars and every cell in
your body."
—Discover magazine
"Haber and Bosch are fascinating if troubled personalities, brought
by Hager compellingly to life."
—Washington Post Book World
“[A] gripping account of the partnership between two Nobel Prize
winners whose efforts to save the world had tragic consequences
we’re still sifting through today.”
—Plenty magazine
“You will certainly find [Hager’s] story of [Fritz Haber and Carl
Bosch] and their discover to be enlightening and entertaining….I
know of few other books that provide the general reader with a
better portrait of chemistry as the most useful of sciences, and I
intend to recommend it to scientists and non-scientists alike.”
—The Journal of Chemical Education
“Many discoveries and inventions are touted as history-changing.
But as Thomas Hager admirably proves in his new book, The Alchemy
of Air, Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch not only changed history, they
made much of recent human history possible. As Hager solemnly notes
in his introduction, ‘the discovery described in this book is
keeping alive nearly half the people on earth.’ ….As with almost
all technological advancement, however, there is a downside. The
synthetic Haber-Bosch nitrogen, which now makes up about half the
nitrogen in every human body, also fueled the weapons of the world
wars and created a nitrogen-rich environment that is having a huge
impact on Earth, from lush vegetative growth to dead zones in the
oceans. Thanks to two visionary and troubled scientists, we are all
now, in Hager’s words, ‘creatures of the air,’ dependent for our
very existence on a process whose consequences we don’t completely
understand.”
—BookPage
A fast-paced account of the early-20th-century quest to develop
synthetic fertilizer. Today hundreds of factories convert
atmospheric nitrogen to ammonia in order to manufacture the
artificial fertilizers that make modern-day agricultural yields
possible. They are based on the technological advance known as the
Haber-Bosch process, developed prior to World War I by the German
chemists and Nobel laureates Fritz Haber (1868–1934) and Carl Bosch
(1874–1940). Hager (The Demon Under the Microscope: From
Battlefield Hospitals to Nazi Labs, One Doctor’s Heroic Search for
the World’s First Miracle Drug, 2006, etc.) offers a superb
narrative of these brilliant men and their scientific discovery.
Around the turn of the century, the world faced a shortage of the
fixed nitrogen needed to provide food for a growing population.
Hager sets the stage by describing the world’s reliance in the 19th
century on nitrates from Peru and Chile that could be used as
natural fertilizer or to make gunpowder, and finds plenty of human
drama in the battles to control the lucrative international trade.
Determined to help end Germany’s dependence on South American
nitrates, Bosch and Haber worked at the German chemical company
BASF to find a way to convert nitrogen into ammonia. Bosch
developed the process, and Haber designed bigger industrial plants.
By 1944, the Haber-Bosch factory at Leuna—a primary target for U.S.
bombers—occupied three square miles and employed 35,000 workers.
The author not only illuminates the scientists’ complex work, but
also digs into their personal lives. Bosch, a melancholic with a
huge villa in Heidelberg, asked Hitler to spare Jewish scientists
for the sake of German chemistry and physics (the Fuhrer replied:
“Then we’ll just have to work 100 years without physics and
chemistry!”). Haber, a Jew, developed the chlorine gas used in
World War I, sought a way to extract gold from the oceans to pay
off German war reparations and conducted research that led to the
development of the Zyklon B gas used in Nazi death camps. Science
writing of the first order.
—Kirkus Reviews, starred review
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