Databases
- Science Database
Articles on both the applied and general sciences like aerospace, computers, transportation, and biology.
On the Shelf at CCBC Libraries
The Alchemy of Air by
A sweeping history of tragic genius, cutting-edge science, and the Haber-Bosch discovery that changed billions of lives--including your own. At the dawn of the twentieth century, humanity was facing global disaster: Mass starvation was about to become a reality. A call went out to the world' s scientists to find a solution. This is the story of the two men who found it: brilliant, self-important Fritz Haber and reclusive, alcoholic Carl Bosch. Together they discovered a way to make bread out of air, built city-sized factories, and saved millions of lives. But their epochal triumph came at a price we are still paying. The Haber-Bosch process was also used to make the gunpowder and explosives that killed millions during the two world wars. Both men were vilified during their lives; both, disillusioned and disgraced, died tragically. The Alchemy of Air is the extraordinary, previously untold story of a discovery that changed the way we grow food and the way we make war-and that promises to continue shaping our lives in fundamental and dramatic ways.
Call Number: QD21 .H26 2008
Master Mind by
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.
Call Number: QD22.H15 C48 2005
Websites
- Fritz Haber
from the Science History Institute - Haber, ethics and the Nobel Prize
from University of York, Department of Education
Online Articles
- The Amoral Scientist
JSTOR Daily, July 8, 2019 - Industrial ammonia production emits more CO2 than any other chemical-making reaction. Chemists want to change that
Chemical and Engineering News, June 15, 2019 - How fertiliser helped feed the world
BBC News, January 2, 2017 - Fritz Haber’s Experiments in Life and Death
Smithsonian, June 6, 2012 - Fritz Haber: Jewish chemist whose work led to Zyklon BBBC News, April 12, 2011
- Fritz Haber: 1868 - 1934
Toxicological Sciences, Volume 55, Issue 1, May 2000, Pages 1–2, https://doi.org/10.1093/toxsci/55.1.1
