Master Mind: The Rise and Fall of Fritz Haber, the Nobel Laureate Who Launched the Age of Chemical Warfare
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.10 (785 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0060562722 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 336 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2017-02-10 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Approximately a week after Ypres Haber's wife, a scientist believed to have opposed the use of poison gas, committed suicide. . From Publishers Weekly Fritz Haber (1868–1934), winner of the 1918 Nobel Prize for chemistry, was, in Charles's eyes, a "modern Faust": "willing to serve any master who could further his passion for knowledge and progress." Having discovered how to manufacture nitrogen-based fertilizer, which allowed the increase of crop production needed to feed an exploding human population, he also developed the first poison gas, used infamously in WWI at Ypres on April 22, 1915. It's this harrowing moral thicket that most fascinates Charles (Lords of the Harvest) in this overly sympathetic biography of the first "scientist-warrior." Haber was passionately committed to German nationalism (Je
J. head said Barely known Giant that has Shaped the Modern World. It is often said the four people who had the most effect on the twentieth century were Einstein, Marx, Freud, and Darwin. Fritz Haber has to be close to number five. Mankind's food production, yield per acre, has always been limited to the amount of nitrogen that becomes "fixed" into the soil as nitrates. Historically crops were rotated; fields were alternately planted with nitrogen fixing plants to improv. A Look at the Scientific Mind The mind of a scientist is a curious thing. A scientist is obviously driven by curiosity but what sparks that curiosity and what puts some scientific minds above others is a problem. The lives of Newton and Einstein have picked over for clues but, often, more clarity can be seen in the lives of the brilliant, if lesser, scientific minds. Fritz Haber is such an example.Haber was the inventor of the process . "I really enjoyed this book" according to Michael J. Howard. I really enjoyed this book. I found it very readable and, though a little superficial and slanted in spots, it is a great introduction to the man who is very possibly the most important person most people have never heard of. This book focuses, as the title suggests, on Haber's work on chemical weapons, which was certainly through the lens of time morally questionable at best. It does, however, also hit on
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. For others, he was a war criminal, possessed by raw ambition. 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. For some, he was a benefactor of humanity and devoted friend. 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. 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 thr