Carl bosch and fritz haber
Carl bosch and fritz haber wedding.
Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch – Feed the World
Claudia Flavell-While profiles the world-changing efforts of Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch
Top to bottom: Fritz Haber (Photo courtesy of Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-S13651), Carl Bosch (Photo courtesy of BASF)
No chemical engineering feat better illustrates the double-edged nature of many inventions than the Haber-Bosch process.
Carl bosch and fritz haber
Developed by industrial chemist Fritz Haber and scaled up by the chemical engineer Carl Bosch, the Haber-Bosch process takes nitrogen from the air and converts it to ammonia.
This made it possible for the first time to produce synthetic fertilisers and produce sufficient food for the Earth’s growing population.
Indeed, without the Haber-Bosch process we would only be able to produce around two-thirds the amount of food we do today, and the Earth’s population would have to shrink accordingly.
On the flipside, nitrogen is also a key raw material in the production of high explosives.
When Germany exhausted its su