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In the early 20th century German chemist Fritz Haber developed the process leading to the creation of synthetic nitrogen. His brilliant innovation, however, is very much a double-edged sword.

A Moment in Time is a brief, exciting and compelling journey into the past. Created to excite and enlighten the public about the past, its relevance to the present and its impact on the future, A Moment In Time is a captivating historical narrative that is currently broadcast worldwide.

Transcript

Lead: In the early 20th century German chemist Fritz Haber developed the process leading to the creation of synthetic nitrogen. His brilliant innovation, however, is very much a double-edged sword.

Intro: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: After his initial breakthrough, for which he received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1918, Haber was made the director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry in Berlin. With the outbreak of World War I, he led in the development of poison gas. His motives appear to be mixed--partly emerging out of intense German patriotism but also in hopes that the use of gas would hasten the end of the bloodletting. He returned home greatly disappointed in the war’s result but also conflicted over his own role in the use of chemical weapons. Haber’s wife committed suicide shortly thereafter--partly, it is said, in revulsion over her husband’s complicity in the wartime carnage. After the Nazi takeover in 1933, as an ethnic Jew, he saw that even his long-time loyal service to Germany would not protect him against the coming barbarity, and he accepted a post in Cambridge, England. He died in obscurity in 1934.

Haber’s greatest contribution was in creating the synthetic nitrogen that has transformed agriculture and made it possible to support a much larger world population. The good news is that perhaps two billion people are alive today because of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer. The bad news is that two billion are alive today and dependent upon synthetic nitrogen fertilizer. Also, because of the nitrogen cycle, this huge increase in nitrogen--up to 175 million tons annually--either goes back into the atmosphere and eats away at the ozone layer thus contributing to global warming, or--as runoff--enters the water supply, forcing out other valuable nutrients such as oxygen, causing the overgrowth of algae and killing off competitive plant and animal marine life.

Finally, there is evidence that the availability of cheap, abundant synthetic nitrogen--a key ingredient in the production of conventional munitions--figured in German strategic calculations prior to that nation’s initiation of World Wars I and II.

Haber’s brilliant contribution cannot be denied and the results have been very positive--but also decidedly negative.

At the University of Richmond, this is Dan Roberts.

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