Fixing the Nitrogen Problem

Each year, the chemical industry synthesizes tons of nitrogenous fertilizers, increasing agricultural production around the globe. But prior to 1915, people had to rely solely on natural resources for fertilizer, and the dwindling supply of these materials caused widespread fear of world starvation. 

A crisis was averted, however, through the discovery of an answer to the nitrogen problem, a term used at the time to describe the shortage of useful nitrogen despite its abundance in the atmosphere. 

In 1798, Thomas Malthus published his famous Essay on Population, a report predicting that the world s food supplies could not keep up with the growing human population and that 

Few living organisms can utilize the gas that forms 78% of the atmosphere they need nitrogen that has been combined with other elements, or fixed, to survive. 

But soils often lack enough of the microorganisms that fix nitrogen for plants, so fertilizers containing usable nitrogen compounds are added. In 1898, two-thirds of the world s supply of these compounds came from Chile, where beds of sodium nitrate, or Chile saltpeter, were abundant. But, as the chemist William Crookes emphasized in his speech to the British Association that year, these reserves were limited it was up to his colleagues to discover alternatives and prevent Malthus s dire forecast from coming true. 

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