Fritz Haber 1868-1934 A Man of Refinement

The figure of Fritz Haber (see Fig. 1.15) pervades this Chapter, as Kurtz dominates in Conrad s Heart of Darkness . He is rarely a direct player, but his influence is profound. He was born in Breslau, Silesia, Germany (now Wroclaw, Poland) on 9 December, 1868, and died in Basle, Switzerland, of a heart attack, on 30 January, 1934. During his 

It is rare that one man can have spawned so much good and so much evii, and this forms the central conflict in Tony Harrison s play Square Rounds (see Section 1.6.3). He won the Nobel prize for chemistry in November 1919 (for his contribution to the Haber-Bosch process for ammonia). He was Jewish, and had to leave Germany (for Cambridge) in 1933, when Hitler came to power he died shortly afterwards. 

It is remarkable that Partington s biography [1589e] of Haber makes no mention of his contributions to chemical warfare nor does his Nobel prize citation. 

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