Of the two progress studies up for review, I think this is better than the invention of concrete one. Mostly because it dips more into how the development of fertilizer interacted with other domains (notably: war), as well as some politics/history.
This part was actually most interesting to me, which you may have missed if you started reading and then decided “meh, I don’t care how artificial fertilizer was invented.”
The Alchemy of Air is as much about the lives of Haber and Bosch, and what happened after their process became a reality, as it is about the science and technology of the process itself. Even though the technology was my main interest this time, I found the history captivating.
Haber was a Jew, at a time when Jews were second-class citizens in Germany. Rather than denouncing the society he lived in, this seemed to cause Haber to seek its approval. After his scientific achievement with ammonia, he got a high-status job at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes in Berlin, and sought to be an adviser to the Kaiser himself. Jews were barred from military service, but Haber was able to become a science adviser to the military—even pioneering the use of poison gas in WW1, a role that left him with a reputation as a war criminal.
Haber believed that if Jews showed what good, patriotic German citizens they could be, they could eventually be accepted as equals. Decades later, when the Nazis came to power and began “cleansing” Jews first out of the German government, then out of all of society, Haber saw his dream of acceptance fall completely to pieces. He died, shortly before WW2, in great distress.
Bosch, on the other hand, held liberal political views and was against the Nazis. He even tried to speak out against them, and in a personal meeting with Hilter made a futile argument for freedom of inquiry and better treatment of the Jews. But at the same time he made deals with the Nazis to secure funding for his chemical company—by then he was the head, not only of BASF, but of a broader industry association called IG Farben. He was building a massive chemical plant in the heart of Germany, at Leuna, to produce not only ammonia but also what he saw as his magnum opus: synthetic gasoline, made from coal. In the end Farben became virtually a state company and provided much of the material Germany needed for WW2, including ammonia, gasoline, and rubber.
Bosch died shortly after the war began. On his deathbed, he predicted that the war would be a disaster for Germany. It would go well at first, he said, and Germany would occupy France and maybe even Britain. But then Hitler would make the fatal mistake of invading Russia. In the end, the skies would darken with Allied planes, and much of Germany would be destroyed. It happened as he predicted, and Bosch’s beloved Leuna was a major target, ultimately crippled by wave after wave of Allied bombing raids.
Of the two progress studies up for review, I think this is better than the invention of concrete one. Mostly because it dips more into how the development of fertilizer interacted with other domains (notably: war), as well as some politics/history.
This part was actually most interesting to me, which you may have missed if you started reading and then decided “meh, I don’t care how artificial fertilizer was invented.”