Haber, Fritz writings

Ammonia is an important base, used to make fertilizers, nylon, and nitric acid. The manufacture of ammonia depends on a process discovered by Fritz Haber (1868-1934). After gathering information from print or electronic resources, write an obituary for Haber. Describe his accomplishments and the effect on society of plentiful supplies of ammonia. 

My father owned a sanatorium for nervous ailments in the Thuringian Forest, begins the letter. Around 1891, a patient came to us, a chemistry student named Fritz Haber. The writer of the letter explains that she was just three years old at the time. He liked children more than most, and played with me quite a bit. My father told me later that Fritz Haber always told him, laughing about it, that I d be his bride he d never marry anyone else. She still has Fritz Haber s picture, she writes. One of the other patients at the time, an artist, drew it. 

Fritz haber s debut performance on the scientific stage captured Wilhelm Ostwald s full attention and fixed itself in his memory. Years later, while writing his memoirs, Ostwald remembered the scene clearly the fifth annual congress of the German Electrochemical Society in 1898, hosted by Ostwald himself in his gleaming new Institute of Physical Chemistry in Leipzig—the institute that Haber had once tried and failed to join. 

Fritz Haber had written off the possibility of honor in Stockholm—or perhaps he just didn t want to jinx his chances. When Richard Willstatter, who d received the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1915, nominated Haber for the prize immediately after the war, Haber responded in a letter to his friend that I find it unbearable to write about such things. It s all so dreary and irrelevant, and I have no doubt that political considerations make it inconceivable for Stockholm to consider Germans who ve been recommended by other Germans. Nor was he convinced that his scientific legacy amounted to much I always jumped from one thing to another. ... 

Before I had any reasonable prospects for writing a book on Fritz Haber, Alison Richards, a science editor at National Public Radio, gave me a chance to explore Haber s life and legacy in a pair of radio reports. I m grateful to her for supporting this unconventional project. The reports were made possible through a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. 

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