Summary
The Alchemy of Air starts by introducing a speech that was made by Sir William Crookes in 1898 addressing the food crisis that was soon to come when the South American fertilizer that the western world depended on ran out. This shocked people as they fancied there to be an endless supply but he was right. He called for scientists to find a way to produce more Nitrogen to grow crops and support the exploding population. It gives a brief history of saltpeter, its use in Europe and China in both fertilizers and gunpowder and then the demand for it. The book then goes on to show an overview of the two popular fertilizers of the time, their previous historical meanings, how they became popular, the wars that surrounded them, and eventually how they ran out. Peruvian guano from guano islands came first, then Chilean nitrates from the Atacama desert. Basically Peru was pretty irresponsible with the money it made off of guano and got itself into trouble when the guano ran out so they wanted a part of the nitrate trade but the Chileans had already taken a hold of it, then Bolivia (with a very unskilled dictator) tried to get a part of it and failed horribly.
Then we get to go to Germany where we meet Fritz Haber, a talented young Jewish chemist who wants to get further in his field but is having a rather hard time. A chemist of around his age but of much better standing, Nernst, opposes him and they argue about the results of an experiment that Haber did on getting nitrogen from the air and the yield he recorded getting. Haber gets rather upset and dedicates himself to proving Nernst wrong then ends up actually researching and experimenting to a point where him and his partner figure out how to fix nitrogen in an amount that could actually be usable and of course, salable. They market this to a big dye company, BASF, that was willing to take a gamble on his new invention in order to get ahead in business. The issue is increasing the yield. They find a good catalyst in the rare metal Osmium. This is unfortunate however because the supply of Osmium in the world was very low and they would quickly use it up if it were used in production of the nitrogen and ammonia. A chemist from BASF, Carl Bosch, starts working on the matter.
They search for a better catalyst and finally find it in Iron mixed with specific other metals. Bosch is very hardworking and inventive and as time goes on he and his team meet every problem that comes up and tackles it head on, always finding a way around it such as when their test models for bigger machines kept exploding and Bosch examined the metal to find it had gone brittle from the pressure. For a few months him and his team tested to see what the best solution would be and ended up putting in small holes to let small amounts of Hydrogen out and fitting the inside of the steel with soft iron to absorb the hygrogen that was going into the steel and making it brittle. As Bosch tackled all these issues Haber became irrelevant to the team and announced his discovery at the college he worked at. He was limited in what he could say by the company but his reputation rose in spite of that. He took on a better standing in the academic scene and prospered. Meanwhile BASF and Bosch were improving their machines and doing what nobody else had done before. To make and improve the machines they were inventing new things constantly as it was all at the edge of new science and they had no previous examples to go off of. Finally the machines were made at a larger scale and read to be made into a factory. They made this factory next to the town of Oppau and it took on the name as well. BASF flourished from this new factory, Bosch was promoted, and Haber was invited to be the head of a new school that was being started in Berlin.
Having being born Jewish in an anti-Semitic Europe, Haber, as many Jewish people did, became very overly-nationalistic to try to remind people that he could be a good German too. He converted to Christianity, as did his wife, and longed for the chance to show that he could be of use to his beloved country. So when world war one broke out he was the first to enlist and worked feverishly to support the war campaign through chemistry. Seeing that when access to Chilean nitrates was cut off to Germany they would not be able to make gunpowder and fertilize their crops he asked BASF if their process could be adjusted to make nitrates so they could get government funding instead of an apposing process that required more materials. At first they said no but they ended up developing a system to make it happen and gained a contract with the German Government to make nitrate using the Haber-Bosch process.BASF ended up opening a new, bigger factory that was dubbed Leuna (again named after the nearest town). This became the crown jewel, the masterpiece of BASF and Bosch's work. Haber devoted his time to developing a way to make better deadly gases to use in chemical warfare. Previously European countries has all agreed to not use projectile chemical gases in war but the French had already broken that agreement by using a form of early tear gas in early world war one. Haber developed a chlorine gas that killed, much to the dismay of his wife. His wife, Clara, was also a chemist and felt her husband's chemical weapons were a perversion of the thing she loved. But Haber rose through the ranks and became a Captain from his invention (Jews weren't allowed to be officers but they could be a Captain) and was later seen as a war criminal for his contribution to chemical warfare.
After Germany lost the war the allied nations came into Germany and tried to take BASF's trade secrets from their factories. They all desired their own Haber-Bosch factories but Bosch skillfully eluded them, refusing to turn on his machines in their presence among other things. Still, they sacked the factory, taking all the dyes and materials. This happened a few more times and during the conference at Versailles where Bosch was the German representative he made a deal with a French company. The allies weren't listening to anything he said so he sold the French company some Haber-Bosch secrets in order for securing that his factories would be allowed to remain functional. Later other countries eventually found out and made their own factories but BASF found ways to stay ahead of the competition, improving their factories at lightening speed. Haber's wife committed suicide and two years later he married a pretty, much younger woman. This marriage too, failed.
Haber worked on ways to try and make Germany great again among continued secret testing of war weapons and gases and unsuccessfully trying to find a way to take the gold out of sea water. Oppau exploded and Bosch, now the head of the company, had a break down after making a speach to the families of the deceased workers. He then disappeared for about a year, returning even less sociable. He was still dedicated to the company though and as the German chemical companies planned to merge he was voted to be the leader of them all. They became IG Farben.
Haber and his second wife divorced after a decade and two children. He felt this was an extreme personal failure and wrote Einstein in a deep depression about it. Meanwhile, Bosch was looking for the next innovation to keep his company at the top. He saw this in the possibilities of synthetic oil. He made international ties with Standard Oil and Ford Motor Company with the lure of synthetic oil in a world where oil was running out. IG Farben expanded and created factories in other countries to avoid tariffs. Bosch became obsessed with his factory and making synthetic oil. The costs kept rising but he kept with it.
Then a giant oil well was found in Oklahoma and there was no longer a shortage of oil. Still, they had already invested too much money and Farben continued in its research saying that it would end Germany's dependence on international oil companies. Of course then suddenly the Great Depression hit the US and it started a chain reaction through the world. Now they were really in trouble. They struggled through the great depression, succeeding in making synthetic oil and then came Hitler. Bosch had been watching Hitler for awhile and didn't agree with his message. Unfortunately he wasn't too quiet about this and as Hitler gained more and more power he removed Bosch from power as well. Helpless to fight this new powerful force, Bosch drank himself to death. Haber, too, suffered from Hitler's regime. The Nazi's offered him a job due to his work with chemical warfare in the first world war. Haber was about to take it when he noticed that other Jewish scientists had been denied similar opportunities by Hitler. He left Germany, the country he so dearly loved, outraged. His health had deteriorated after his divorce and he had a heart attack and died in a hotel during a trip.
We still make ammonia and nitrates using the Haber-Bosch process and it is what allows us to feed our overgrown population. These two men are the reason that most of us are able to be alive. Whatever their personal opinions were, whatever the causes and effects were, the entire world was shaped by their discoveries.
Then we get to go to Germany where we meet Fritz Haber, a talented young Jewish chemist who wants to get further in his field but is having a rather hard time. A chemist of around his age but of much better standing, Nernst, opposes him and they argue about the results of an experiment that Haber did on getting nitrogen from the air and the yield he recorded getting. Haber gets rather upset and dedicates himself to proving Nernst wrong then ends up actually researching and experimenting to a point where him and his partner figure out how to fix nitrogen in an amount that could actually be usable and of course, salable. They market this to a big dye company, BASF, that was willing to take a gamble on his new invention in order to get ahead in business. The issue is increasing the yield. They find a good catalyst in the rare metal Osmium. This is unfortunate however because the supply of Osmium in the world was very low and they would quickly use it up if it were used in production of the nitrogen and ammonia. A chemist from BASF, Carl Bosch, starts working on the matter.
They search for a better catalyst and finally find it in Iron mixed with specific other metals. Bosch is very hardworking and inventive and as time goes on he and his team meet every problem that comes up and tackles it head on, always finding a way around it such as when their test models for bigger machines kept exploding and Bosch examined the metal to find it had gone brittle from the pressure. For a few months him and his team tested to see what the best solution would be and ended up putting in small holes to let small amounts of Hydrogen out and fitting the inside of the steel with soft iron to absorb the hygrogen that was going into the steel and making it brittle. As Bosch tackled all these issues Haber became irrelevant to the team and announced his discovery at the college he worked at. He was limited in what he could say by the company but his reputation rose in spite of that. He took on a better standing in the academic scene and prospered. Meanwhile BASF and Bosch were improving their machines and doing what nobody else had done before. To make and improve the machines they were inventing new things constantly as it was all at the edge of new science and they had no previous examples to go off of. Finally the machines were made at a larger scale and read to be made into a factory. They made this factory next to the town of Oppau and it took on the name as well. BASF flourished from this new factory, Bosch was promoted, and Haber was invited to be the head of a new school that was being started in Berlin.
Having being born Jewish in an anti-Semitic Europe, Haber, as many Jewish people did, became very overly-nationalistic to try to remind people that he could be a good German too. He converted to Christianity, as did his wife, and longed for the chance to show that he could be of use to his beloved country. So when world war one broke out he was the first to enlist and worked feverishly to support the war campaign through chemistry. Seeing that when access to Chilean nitrates was cut off to Germany they would not be able to make gunpowder and fertilize their crops he asked BASF if their process could be adjusted to make nitrates so they could get government funding instead of an apposing process that required more materials. At first they said no but they ended up developing a system to make it happen and gained a contract with the German Government to make nitrate using the Haber-Bosch process.BASF ended up opening a new, bigger factory that was dubbed Leuna (again named after the nearest town). This became the crown jewel, the masterpiece of BASF and Bosch's work. Haber devoted his time to developing a way to make better deadly gases to use in chemical warfare. Previously European countries has all agreed to not use projectile chemical gases in war but the French had already broken that agreement by using a form of early tear gas in early world war one. Haber developed a chlorine gas that killed, much to the dismay of his wife. His wife, Clara, was also a chemist and felt her husband's chemical weapons were a perversion of the thing she loved. But Haber rose through the ranks and became a Captain from his invention (Jews weren't allowed to be officers but they could be a Captain) and was later seen as a war criminal for his contribution to chemical warfare.
After Germany lost the war the allied nations came into Germany and tried to take BASF's trade secrets from their factories. They all desired their own Haber-Bosch factories but Bosch skillfully eluded them, refusing to turn on his machines in their presence among other things. Still, they sacked the factory, taking all the dyes and materials. This happened a few more times and during the conference at Versailles where Bosch was the German representative he made a deal with a French company. The allies weren't listening to anything he said so he sold the French company some Haber-Bosch secrets in order for securing that his factories would be allowed to remain functional. Later other countries eventually found out and made their own factories but BASF found ways to stay ahead of the competition, improving their factories at lightening speed. Haber's wife committed suicide and two years later he married a pretty, much younger woman. This marriage too, failed.
Haber worked on ways to try and make Germany great again among continued secret testing of war weapons and gases and unsuccessfully trying to find a way to take the gold out of sea water. Oppau exploded and Bosch, now the head of the company, had a break down after making a speach to the families of the deceased workers. He then disappeared for about a year, returning even less sociable. He was still dedicated to the company though and as the German chemical companies planned to merge he was voted to be the leader of them all. They became IG Farben.
Haber and his second wife divorced after a decade and two children. He felt this was an extreme personal failure and wrote Einstein in a deep depression about it. Meanwhile, Bosch was looking for the next innovation to keep his company at the top. He saw this in the possibilities of synthetic oil. He made international ties with Standard Oil and Ford Motor Company with the lure of synthetic oil in a world where oil was running out. IG Farben expanded and created factories in other countries to avoid tariffs. Bosch became obsessed with his factory and making synthetic oil. The costs kept rising but he kept with it.
Then a giant oil well was found in Oklahoma and there was no longer a shortage of oil. Still, they had already invested too much money and Farben continued in its research saying that it would end Germany's dependence on international oil companies. Of course then suddenly the Great Depression hit the US and it started a chain reaction through the world. Now they were really in trouble. They struggled through the great depression, succeeding in making synthetic oil and then came Hitler. Bosch had been watching Hitler for awhile and didn't agree with his message. Unfortunately he wasn't too quiet about this and as Hitler gained more and more power he removed Bosch from power as well. Helpless to fight this new powerful force, Bosch drank himself to death. Haber, too, suffered from Hitler's regime. The Nazi's offered him a job due to his work with chemical warfare in the first world war. Haber was about to take it when he noticed that other Jewish scientists had been denied similar opportunities by Hitler. He left Germany, the country he so dearly loved, outraged. His health had deteriorated after his divorce and he had a heart attack and died in a hotel during a trip.
We still make ammonia and nitrates using the Haber-Bosch process and it is what allows us to feed our overgrown population. These two men are the reason that most of us are able to be alive. Whatever their personal opinions were, whatever the causes and effects were, the entire world was shaped by their discoveries.