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The Alchemy of Air: A Jewish Genius, a Doomed Tycoon, and the Scientific Discovery That Fed the World but Fueled the Rise of Hitler
Download The Alchemy of Air: A Jewish Genius, a Doomed Tycoon, and the Scientific Discovery That Fed the World but Fueled the Rise of Hitler
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A sweeping history of tragic genius, cutting-edge science, and the discovery that changed billions of lives - including your own.
At the dawn of the 20th century, humanity was facing global disaster. Mass starvation, long predicted for the fast-growing population, 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 enormously gifted, fatally flawed men who found it: the brilliant, self-important Fritz Haber and the reclusive, alcoholic Carl Bosch.
Together they discovered a way to make bread out of air, built city-sized factories, controlled world markets, and saved millions of lives. Their invention continues to feed us today; without it, more than two billion people would starve.
But their epochal triumph came at a price we are still paying. The Haber-Bosch process was also used to make the gunpowder and high explosives that killed millions during the two world wars. Both men were vilified during their lives; both, disillusioned and disgraced, died tragically. Today we face the other unintended consequences of their discovery - massive nitrogen pollution and a growing pandemic of obesity.
The Alchemy of Air is the extraordinary, previously untold story of two master scientists who saved the world only to lose everything and of the unforseen results of a discovery that continue to shape our lives in the most fundamental and dramatic of ways.
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Audible Audiobook
Listening Length: 10 hours and 47 minutes
Program Type: Audiobook
Version: Unabridged
Publisher: Audible Studios
Audible.com Release Date: October 12, 2010
Whispersync for Voice: Ready
Language: English, English
ASIN: B0046Y0BP0
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
Overall, I enjoyed Alchemy of Air and the examination of the Haber-Bosch process and its impact on the world. The book raised a lot of interesting questions on the utility and consequences of fixing nitrogen from the air. Though, the premise of the book is a bit melodramatic. The author claims that over 2 billion people are alive as a result of the Haber-Bosch process, but that seems pretty speculative.This is my favorite quote from the book from Bosch:"I have often asked myself whether it would have been better if we had not succeeded. The war perhaps would have ended sooner with less misery and on better terms. Gentlemen, these questions are all useless. Progress in science and technology cannot be stopped. They are in many ways akin to art. One can persuade the one to halt as little as the others. They drive the people who are born for them to activity."This is Bosch's opinion, and it highlights the double-edged nature that this book does of good job of explaining. In fact, the book seems to touch mostly on the negative aspects of the pursuit of better fertilizer and the Haber-Bosch process. Much of the book covers wars, including wars in South America over Guano and salt in Chile, WWI, and WWII. It touches on the slave-like work conditions in Peru and Germany. And in the end, the book notes that the end result is pollution and obesity.One aspect of the book that threw me off in certain parts was when the author described the challenges with developing the Haber-Bosch process, related to finding a catalyst and dispersing hydrogen. The book would seem to spend a couple paragraphs describing the issues and then suddenly the next sentence would state that Bosch somehow found a solution with explaining the process. It seemed to make the book over dramatic in parts.Overall, I liked the book.
Thomas Hager’s book, The Alchemy of Air, is an extraordinary book that is both fascinating and instructive . It focuses largely on Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch. Both became Nobel Laureates. Haber was the utterly brilliant chemist who created the process that made it possible to create synthetic nitrogen fertilizer out of air when supplies of natural fertilizer from Peru and Chile were beginning to diminish, thereby threatening the world with catastrophic famines. In addition to fertilizers, synthetic ammonia products were also the basis of explosives. Haber’s discovery provided Germany with both the food and the explosives that enabled Germany to stay in WW I for four years; Without it Germany would have had to surrender after about two years. It is estimated that up to half of the world's population is alive because of Haber's devvelopment of synthetic fertlizer.Haber also invented the poison gas that was first launched at the Allies at the Second Battle of Ypres on April 22, 1915. The Allied forces were unprepared for the attack in which 10,000 are said to have perished. Haber developed the gas and also the method of delivery. He calculated when the wind would blow the gas away from the German lines and toward the Allied lines. Haber also developed Zyklon A, out of which Zyklon B, the gas used by the Germans in WWII to exterminate the Jews. Both Bosch and Haber were important scientists at BASF before I. G. Farben, the great German conglomerate, was created. Bosch was able to design and have constructed the huge factory that made the mass production of ammontia economically feasible. Without his practical implementation, the Haber discovery would have been economically useless. BASF’s original factory site was at Ludwigshafen. During the early part of WW I, the French were able to bomb Ludwigshafen even with their primitive planes. Bosch created a new site, Leuna, which was far less accessible to French bombers. In WW II, another Farben product. Leunabenzin, synthetric gasoline, enabled Germany to stay in the war in spite of the diminution of supplies of natural petroleum products. During WW II allied, mostly American, bombers bombed Leuna as the key to taking Germany out of the war.When I. G. Farben was originally formed in 1925, Bosch became its head, In the late 1930s Farben was the world's largest chemical corporation and the world's fourth largest corporation., In addition to BASF, Farben's component corpoations included Hoest, Bayer, Agfa, Fritz Haber (1868-1934) was born Jewish in what was then Breslau and is now Wroclaw in Poland. He converted to Lutheranism. Both of his wives were born Jewish but converted as a condition of marriage. About twenty per cent of BASF-Farben’s scientists, before Hitler, were Jewish as were a number of members of the governing board. Bosch was not a Nazi. He tried unsuccessfully to retain the Jewish scientists. He was more helpful in finding work for them outside of Germany. Farben was speedily Nazified. Bosch ended up an emotional wreck who drank too much after attempting to appease the Nazis while attempting to get his Jewish scientists out of Germany.Both Haber and Bosch were utter geniuses. I did not realize the crucial importance of Farben before reading this book.I knew it was important. In reality it was crucial to Germany's war effort in both wars. One of Farben's corporations during WW II was I.G. Auschwitz which produced buna, synthetic rubber, using Jewish slave labor which were worked to death and then replaced by other slave laborers who were similarly worked to death. After the war, the Allies put an end to Farben although its component parts have flourished. Haber was regarded as a Jew by the Nazis although he had been a passionate German nationalist.It can be argued that Haber was the most important scientist of the first half of the twentieth century because of his creation of synthetic fertilizer, It can be argued that he was one of the most destructive because of his contributions to German weaponry. In 1933, he left Germany for Cambridge where Lord Rutherford, Britain's leading physicist, refused to shake his hand,According to Hager, the huge jump in the world’s population since 1900 was due to the work of Haber and Bosch. Without it, there would have been at least 40% fewer people in the world. Thus, Haber was one of the most important scientists of the twentieth century. Without his discoveries and Bosch’s productive implementation, there would have been catastrophic Malthusian famines. But, Haber who enabled so many to live was also the inventor of the poison gas that killed many. He created zyklon a; zyklon b was used by the Nazis in their death camps. In spite of his desire to serve Germany, the Nazis wanted him out and disgraced. He was a Jew.Religious conversion meant nothing to the Nazis.
This was a very good read - 4.5 stars. Author Thomas Hager is engaging, clear, and he held my interest. The subjects - renowned German chemists (and Nobel laureates) Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch developed what could be argued as the most important chemical process in human history - Nitrogen Fixation via the Haber-Bosch process. Nitrogen fixation - creating ammonia essentially from air (nitrogen and hydrogen) allowed for the production of both fertilizer and high explosives. World-wide fertilizer distribution in turn created the green revolution and has allowed the world's population to explode from less than 2 to over 6 billion (and growing), with the average person going from a marginal existence to an "over-eater". It has also contributed to nitrogen pollution of world-wide waters, ecological destruction, and climate change. High explosives greatly helped create the horrors of both World Wars and countless smaller conflicts, killing many, many millions. It is close to impossible to overstate the importance of this discovery.As the author details, Haber and Bosch were fascinating, driven, and complicated men. They lived in a time of great upheaval. And they came to understand much of the bad, as well as great significance of their work. My one concern about the book is the range of subjects touched upon and consequent short discussion of a lot of it. Author Thomas Hager had enough important topics and material to write perhaps half a dozen good books. More detail could have been used on the chemistry involved, the moral dilemmas, the Jewish-Nazi interaction (Haber was Jewish), Bosch's synfuel development, and other topics. Despite this minor qualm, I recommend this book as one from which a lot will be learned.
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