He generated more opprobrium as the father of chemical warfare than admiration for synthesising ammonia to feed the world, almost producing bread from the air, while his wife killed herself after a party to mark his achievements.
Fritz Haber received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1918 for synthesising ammonia from nitrogen in the air, thereby bringing food to the table commensurate with the exponential population growth.
Born on December 9, 1868, in Breslau (now in Poland), Haber finished university and voluntarily worked in his father's chemical business.
In 1906, he was appointed Professor of Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry and Director of the Institute at Karlsruhe. In his book in 1905, he recorded how atmospheric nitrogen, which is relatively inert, under high pressure and a catalyst, can directly react with hydrogen gas to create ammonia. Later, it was industrialised by Carl Bosch, who won the Nobel Prize in 1931, and the Haber-Bosch process was born. Crops need nitrogen which now comes from ammonia in fertilizers.
In 1901, Haber married the brilliant chemist Clara Immerwahr, the first woman to receive a doctorate from Breslau University. Around the start of WWI, the German Army requested his help to make shells filled with poison gas instead of explosives. Despite the Hague Convention embargo on using chemical agents in battle, Haber was on the frontlines in Ypres as chlorine gas from 6,000 canisters released by the Germans began to drift towards the French trenches.
More than half of the 10,000 troops are believed to have died within minutes of asphyxiation. On May 2, 1915, Haber returned home to attend a party in his honour. He was now a captain. After the party, Clara went to the garden with her husband's pistol, pointed the gun at her heart, and pulled the trigger. Haber had rushed back to the front, apparently phlegmatic.
Despondent over Germany’s defeat and under fierce attack from the Nazis, Haber had to flee his country for England. His diabolical invention ensured that he would die in 1934 aged 65 without a place called home.