Abstract
The early synthetic ammonia industry became strongly associated with myths surrounding Fritz Haber’s personal role in enabling Germany to wage war through his involvement with nitrogen products. Today, this is still repeated as fact. More correctly, he was associated with the use of toxic chemicals in warfare. While he was an ambitious and arguably amoral servant of his country at war, and certainly an adept administrator, he was certainly no worse than those John Galbraith described as “mostly honest men whose public and private behaviour would withstand public scrutiny as well as most” [1].
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
References
Galbraith JK (1969) How to control the military. Doubleday & Co., Inc., Garden City, New York, p 22.
Lenoir T (1992) Practical reason and the construction of knowledge: the lifeworld of Haber-Bosch. In: McMullin E (ed), The social dimensions of science. Indiana University Press, Notre Dame, pp 158–197.
Sheppard D (2017) Robert Le Rossignol, 1884–1976: engineer of the ‘Haber’ process. Notes Rec R Soc London. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1098/rsnr.2016.0019 (accessed 18 March 2017).
Taugbøl T, Andersen EM, Grønn U, Moen BF (2014) Nomination dossier: Rjukan-Notodden industrial heritage site. Nomination to the UNESCO World Heritage List, Norway, pp 44–46.
Haber F (1918) Das Verhältnis zwischen Heereswesen und exakten Naturwissenschaften: Vortrag auf der 24. Hauptversammlung der Deutschen Bunsen-Gesellschaft in Berlin, 8–10 April 1918. Chem Ztg 42:197.
Mittasch A (1951) Chronik meines Lebens (unpublished paper, Deutsches Museum Munich), p 370.
Jones G (1920) Nitrogen: its fixation, its uses in peace and war. Quart J Econ 34(3):391–431.
Morris PJT (1982) The development of acetylene chemistry and synthetic rubber by I.G. Farbenindustrie Aktiengesellschaft: 1926–1945. DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, pp 14–15.
Hayes P (1987) Carl Bosch and Carl Krauch: chemistry and the political economy of Germany, 1925–1945. J Econ Hist 47(2):353–363.
Morris PJT (1998) Ambros, Reppe, and the emergence of heavy organic chemicals in Germany, 1925–1945. In: Travis AS, Schröter HG, Homburg E, Morris PJT (eds), Determinants in the evolution of the European chemical industry, 1900–1939: new technologies, political frameworks, markets and companies. Kluwer, Dordrecht, pp 89–122.
Quoting PJT Morris, personal communication, November 2014.
Plumpe G (1990) Die I.G. Farbenindustrie AG. Wirtschaft, Technik, Politik 1904–1945. Duncker and Humblot, Berlin, pp 550–551.
Morris PJT (1989) The American synthetic rubber research program. University of Pennsylvania Press, Phildelphia.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Travis, A.S. (2018). A Legacy of Synthetic Nitrogen. In: Nitrogen Capture. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68963-0_18
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68963-0_18
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-68962-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-68963-0
eBook Packages: Chemistry and Materials ScienceChemistry and Material Science (R0)