http://www.radiolab.org/story/180132-how-do-you-solve-problem-fritz-haber/









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The question they pose throughout the story, was he good or bad?

Starts during the Crimean War. Hundreds of thousands of Germans die from starvation. The country has reached its max output for wheat. No more people can be sustained because there just isn't enough nitrogen in the soil to make the soil grow more food. Haber, a German jew, invents a system to take nitrogen from the air to make ammonia (fertilizer). Thereby making enough for us to sustain modern population levels. About 1/2 of every american is literally derived from food made from his process in creating fertilizer. Haber won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Fast forward a decade to 1915. Germany is in WWI. He discovers that he can reverse his process and make a cholorine gas. He gets a commision in the German army, and unleashed the cholorine gas near Ypres which creeps its way to the British lines. Making the soldiers basically convulse and drown in their own phlegm. Haber considers it a huge victory in warfare. He holds a party in his own name. His wife, a fellow scientist, is appalled at his basic war crime and tells him so. He accepts an appointment, and the night before he's supposed to go back to the front line, his wife goes and takes out a gun and shoots herself. One of their sons finds her dying. After a night of a slow death, Huber grabs his things and returns to the line. His son later goes to America and eventually commits suicide himself.

The US considers Haber a war criminal.

After WW1 Haber refines the process which makes the chlorine gas, and markets it as a pesticide. Because it can affect humans, he creates a warning smell that lets humans know that the insecticide was coming. This insecticide is known as Zyklon A.

In in 1933's Hitler issued an order making it so that Jews couldn't have government jobs. Haber was in charge of a division of government research and development, and half of his staff were jews. He declined to let them go. Instead he moved away to Britain, but he was not accepted by the scientific community overthere because of his chlorine gas.

Later, Nazi Germany went to the bookshelf and took Zyklon A, and removed the warning smell to make Zyklon B. Zyklon B was the gas used in the German extermination camp gas chambers, which killed many of Habers friends, and relatives.