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Master Mind: The Rise and Fall of Fritz Haber, the Nobel Laureate Who Launched the Age of Chemical Warfare

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The mind of a scientist is a curious thing. A scientist is obviously driven by curiosity but what sparks that curiosity and what puts some scientific minds above others is a problem. The lives of Newton and Einstein have picked over for clues but, often, more clarity can be seen in the lives of the brilliant, if lesser, scientific minds. Fritz Haber is such an example.

Haber was the inventor of the process by which nitrogen can be produced on an industrial scale. This may not seem important but it is the process by which nitrogen fertilizers were invented, allowing food production on a scale never before seen. It is estimated that nearly a third of the current population of the earth could not be supported without the food production allowed by these fertilizers, for which Haber was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1918.

Newton & Einstein have a genius that stands alone but what similarities do we see with Haber, who happened to be a good friend of Einstein's? From what this book describes, it seems to be mainly the intense focus, concentration and hard work that these men brought to bear on problems. A touch of genius doesn't hurt, but without hard work, it amounts to nothing and, as Haber's life demonstrates, hard work and dedication can take you a long way.

So, with the great importance of his work, why is Haber basically unknown? Well, Haber's focus and hard work led him to ignore the morality of some of the implications of his work. In particular, his work with nitrogen contributed greatly to Germany's military might during World War I and World War II, nitrogen being the basic ingredient of explosives. The irony of this is that, despite his work for Germany's greatness in the early twentieth century, his Jewish heritage (even though he practiced Christianity for most of his adult life) made him anathema in Germany upon the rise of the Nazis. At his death in 1934, he was rejected--by the world because of his support of Germany and by Germany because of his Jewishness.

If the prose here is a little bland and somewhat less than penetrating in spots, Mr. Charles does offer us a portrait of the scientist as a blind seeker. For knowledge, yes, but also for recognition of his accomplishments in the public sphere. Perhaps this is where the life of Haber and Einstein most significantly diverge and makes us think Haber the lesser man. In any case, it is a life worth investigating for both its triumphs and its warnings.

I didn't know that Fritz Haber had done so much in his life - especially his invention of an efficient way to manufacture ammonia and fertilizer using nitrogen from the atmosphere; this won him a Nobel Prize. Nor did I know the details of his involvement with poison gas warfare. All of this and much more is fully discussed in this excellent, well-written biography. The author also provides the reader with a good glimpse of the evolving political, religious and cultural climate in which Fritz Haber lived. I found the book difficult to put down due to the engaging style in which it is written. Anyone interested in early twentieth century European history, chemistry and the life of a tragic figure who was central to both will find a great deal in this excellent book.

Haber and Einstein. If for no other reason than the personal direction these two men took in their lives, this book is of historic value. Haber pursued an illusion Einstein realized did not exist. I found Master Mind exciting and of lasting value. Daniel Charles' writing is beautiful as well as lucid. (...)

Fritz Haber could be reduced down into a chemistry textbook footnote. This short biography offers a deeper look into the mind of the major force behind the Haber-Bosch process-that is the process by which hydrogen and nitrogen gas can be fixed into ammonia.

I don't know enough about the history to tell if it's 100% accurate, but the letters and insights seem genuine. As with any book, we only get the facts through the lens the author decides to use. I'm not a huge fan of nonfiction books, but this book held my interest and provided just enough history and chemistry to keep it interesting.

I heard this book reviewed on NPR and had to have it. I am so glad that I bought it and will definitely keep it in my library. I have recommended it to others for its historical and human interest qualities. Do read it soon!

Daniel Charles, otherwise a reporter with NPR, has written this relatively short biography of Fritz Haber, which I found to be a disappointment. Fritz Haber was by all accounts an extraordinary chemist, a Nobel Laureate, a German patriot, and a tragic figure in twentieth-century Germany's tragic history. One of Haber's greatest technical accomplishments was to devise a method of extracting nitrogen from the air, without which Germany would have folded within 6 months of entering the First World War for lack of gunpowder, though one wonders if Haber, Germany, and Europe wouldn't have fared better without his invention. On the other hand, today this invention allows more than a billion people have food to eat thanks to fertilizer made with the same method.

This biography was a disappointment; some of the facts he offers are demonstrably incorrect, some of the facts he offers are, to be polite, wildly exaggerated, and informed voices that strongly dispute the opinions he cites go unmentioned.

To wit: Charles writes that Lunge had a position, and Haber was offered a position at the University of Zurich. These positions were at Zurich's Polytechnic, a totally different institution and arguably the finest Polytech in the German-speaking world.

Charles writes that "Haber was a founder of the military-industrial complex." This amazes me since the Krupp Steel Works, which made Germany's artillery, had for years been so important to Germany that the Kaiser himself busied himself with finding a suitable husband for Bertha Krupp.

Charles writes: "John Dewey's prophecy of 1918 has been proven correct; the marriage of science and military power has endured. And its spiritual heritage leads back to Dahlem," (where Haber had his lab.) He wrote this more than two millenia after Archimedes, the precocious Greek physicist and mathematician, invented ingenious weapons with which his fellow Syracusans fended the Romans off during the Second Punic War...

Charles quotes a source that "apparently it was a common view among scientists at Haber's Institute" that his wife committed suicide to protest his work developing chemical weapons, but omits to mention that one of Haber's other biographers, the son of friend of Haber's, has written that there were those who claim that her suicide was a political statement, but that the family rejects these theories as a politically convenient myths. Haber's son deemed this other biography as the best one yet. Charles himself writes that the family had a history of suicides and that Clara Haber had had serious emotional problems for a long time. Incidentally, the symptoms of her emotional problems are indistinguishable from those of a heavy metal intoxication; Clara Haber's doctoral thesis was on her experimental work with heavy metals and their salts. I believe that basic human decency would have obliged Charles to either mention all the relevant facts and extant opinions surrounding Clara Haber and her tragic death, or else leave her to her well-deserved rest. This is why I give this book one star, and not two.

Make no mistake about it, Fritz Haber was a brilliant scientist, whose life is profoundly interesting. The one motif in Haber's life that Charles largely does justice, and which is moving, is Haber's tragic quest to assimilate himself into German society, only to suffer persecution as a Jew at the hands of the parvenu filth that came to misgovern Germany.

In mid-March, while nearing the end of the writing of my Master's Thesis on Kaiser Wilhelm II and the Outbreak of World War I, perusing the shelves at a local Borders, the spine of this book caught my eye. After reading the dust jacket, and thinking that perhaps this could be interesting - I had not studied the beginnings of chemical weaponry before - I decided to buy the book and proceeded to sit a Starbucks, sip a mocha, and read the first pages.

...

I could barely put this book down, and wound up sitting at said Starbucks for nearly two hours, nearly missing a movie showing I had intended to see (it may have been "The Counterfeiters" - a great movie if one has not seen it yet). Still recovering from the last Potter book (and Pottermania), I found that I was reading this biography as eagerly as I was reading the Deathly Hallows during the twilight hours of July 22nd.

Daniel Charles has written a fascinating study of Fritz Haber. I have noted that another reviewer has not written so kindly of this book and I am inclined to reading another account (for another perspective), but no matter. That reviewer and I can agree on one thing: in Charles' work, Haber devotes his life to becoming as German as any other German, to live for his duty to country, and ultimately, his country spits back at him, he suffers, and he dies, his own creations becoming the tools of his own betrayal. At the end of the day, the book is a morality story, and a tragic one at that. But that is what lends it its vitality as a biography - it is a story, and not just pictures of a man as viewed from afar, somewhere in the not too distant past.

The other intriguing part is its relevance to the modern day - the book questions progress, scientific and technical progress at that, and what it specifically asks are questions of conscience - just because we can do something does not necessarily mean that we should. Perhaps in the fictional world, Tolkien (having lived through World War I, the same world as Haber) can be seen as asking very similar questions. "I shall be great and powerful, and all will love me and despair," says Galadriel to Frodo when he attempts to give her the ring of power. Haber was great and powerful, he commanded the respect of all who knew him, even if those men did not like him, but they despaired. Einstein, a close friend, despaired.

Charles makes a claim about two-thirds of the way through that if Haber had not opened the beast of gas warfare, the war may have ended in 1915, instead of 1918, preventing the Bolshevik Revolution and crises that plagued Germany at its conclusion, preventing thus the rises of men like Stalin and Hitler. The underlying assumption here is that gas warfare had such an effect in the war, that had this phase not begun, the war could have ended earlier. I am unsure as to whether this was the case, as when the first gas attack at Ypres in April 1915 was conducted, the trenches in Europe had already been dug out. Furthermore, I am unconvinced that revolution in Russia was not inevitable, as well as many other factors. Charles here moves through a series of "what if's..." that lead to an interesting conclusion - without Haber, could we have been without Stalin or Hitler? Objectively, history should not look at "what if" ideas, because then it wouldn't really be history, but it is interesting to consider Charles' ideas, as far-fetched this one really is, if only for a moment. Fortunately, he doesn't do this all the time.

All in all, this is an excellent read, and should raise questions on mankind, science and technical progress in the minds of many. Remember - just because we can do something, doesn't mean we should do it. Perhaps this is the greatest warning in Charles' book - a book I have recommended and continue to recommend to many of my close friends.

It is often said the four people who had the most effect on the twentieth century were Einstein, Marx, Freud, and Darwin. Fritz Haber has to be close to number five.
Mankind's food production, yield per acre, has always been limited to the amount of nitrogen that becomes "fixed" into the soil as nitrates. Historically crops were rotated; fields were alternately planted with nitrogen fixing plants to improve yields. In 1909, Fritz Haber's invention showed that man could fix nitrogen, and when teamed up with Carl Bosch, the process could yield ammonia on an industrial scale. Large quantities of nitrogen fertlizer and gunpowder was the result. Thus German manufacture of gunpowder extended Germany's resistance in World War I for years because of this crucial process.
The Author shows the sad irony of war, ideology, and hate. Fritz Haber, a German Jew converted to Christianity to better blend in with the higher echelons of German industrialists as he became very wealthy. He Invented various gases used in gas attacks and one insecticide gas called Zyklon-B, which would be used in the death camps for the extermination of in-mates years later.
A fun loving gregarious Nobel Prize winning industrialist that was a failure as a father and husband, also misread the significance of the Nazis coming to power in Germany. He could not comprehend being robbed on his possessions, business agreements, and professional positions and finally fleeing to Switzerland where he died a broken man in 1934. The book is well written and researched. The last few chapters after Haber's death are a nice touch to the book, It traces Fritz Haber's family after the war and some of the Haber-Bosch machinery used in World War I then again in WWII and finally to help the East German Government make ends meet as late as the 1980's.

1905 is probably the most famous year in science. Numerous publications led the world of science into a new and better understanding of our world.

The most famous today was of course Einstein. His seminal work led to the establishment of the Standard Model of the Universe. It was published in 1905. It also led to the Atomic Bomb which probably saved the lives of a million servicement, including two of my uncles. (Although I'm writing this on the anniversary of the Nagasaki bomb, and there is certainly a different view than mine being expressed in Japan.)

Fritz Haber published seventeen different papers during 1904 and 1905. He was basically defining the science that we now know as Physical Chemistry. The Haber-Bosch process for taking nitrogen out of the air and making it into fertilizer is repsonsible for the food supplies that we have in the world today. While there may be starvation, without Haber there would be much, much more.

The story of Fritz Haber is the story of a giant among scientists. This book tells his story. It tells it however with a negative tone that seems common today among left wing writers.

"Had German politics taken a different turn, Fritz Haber might be considered a hero, and statues of him might stand in prominent places," Charles writes. "Instead, Haber became a tragic figure, trapped within the moral blinders of his time, unable to recognize the direction of history....Haber could not forsee the ultimate consequences of the path he chose; perhaps it isn't fair to expect that he should have. But those consequences - the fateful prolongation of a senseless war, the invention of new methods of dealing out death - stand as a warning to all who follow."

Einstein left Germany, came to the US, and wrote the letter to Roosevelt about building the bomb. Haber remained a German patriot and did the best he could for his country. Perhaps Haber should have come here, would Charles think better of him? But he couldn't predict the future. Who could have possibly have predicted the Nazi's?

I still rank the book quite high, a biography of Haber is long overdue, this one is well researched and well written. I just think that asking a scientist to predict social happenings and condemning him when he is wrong is asking a bit much. Even our philosophers and politicians who should be the best at this sort of thing don't do very well.

The world would be a different place were it not for Fritz Haber. It is a must read for anyone that would like to get a feeling of what Germany and the pre-WWI world was like. We may not have had a WWI and consequently a WWII without great men like Alfred Nobel and Fritz Haber, and yet great scientists cure diseases in the pursuit of Nobel approval and the world eats by the grace of Fritz Haber.