Fritz Haber was a German chemist who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1918. He developed a technique for synthesizing ammonia for fertilizers and poison gas used in World War I and concentration camps in World War II. He supervised the release of poison gas on enemy troops and attempted to extract gold from seawater. His wife committed suicide due to his work, and he was later expelled from Germany for his Jewish ancestry. His family members were killed in concentration camps by the poison gas he helped develop, and his son committed suicide out of shame.
Fritz Haber was a German chemist of Jewish ethnicity. Born in 1868, he was an active scientist between the years of 1891 and his death in 1934, contributing to many important fields of chemistry, for which he won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1918. He was wealthy and famous throughout his life for his early successes, but he had a troubled life which included his wife’s suicide and her expulsion from Germany due to the rise of the Nazi regime. Despite being a Jew hated by Hitler’s regime, Haber was among the most patriotic and scientifically productive Germans of the early 20th century.
Together with Carl Bosch, he developed a technique for synthesizing ammonia, used for fertilizers, from its elements, and was key to synthesizing poison gas used for warfare in World War I and in concentration camps in War II world. Haber is alternately responsible for the lives of millions or even billions who would not have been born were it not for the artificial production of fertilizers and its associated agricultural abundance, and the deaths of millions in the Holocaust.
Haber personally supervised the release of poison gas on enemy troops during World War I. The horrors of chemical warfare during that era led to treaties to ban the use of biological and chemical weapons, which persist to this day. Regarding the ethics of chemical warfare, he said that death was death, and the method of dying was not particularly important. We can see he was wrong from the long suffering experienced by poison gas targets during WW1 who did not die.
After World War I, Haber attempted to devise a plan to enrich Germany and pay off its war debts by efficiently extracting gold from seawater. His reputation as a scientist enabled him to raise significant funds with which to attempt this, but of course he ultimately failed.
In 1915, in the midst of World War I, his wife, who disapproved of his work creating poison gas, committed suicide in their garden with her military service weapon. She left the next morning to supervise the release of poison gas. Later, before World War II, Haber was expelled from Germany for his Jewish ancestry, leaving him dejected. He bounced from place to place, spending time in Oxford, UK, and also in the area that is now known as Israel. Shortly after his expulsion, he died ill and unhappy.
His extended family members were killed in concentration camps by the poison gas, Zyklon B, which he helped develop. Later, in 1945, at the end of the war, his son Hermann Haber committed suicide in the United States, possibly out of shame at the evil his father had helped unleash.
Protect your devices with Threat Protection by NordVPN
