8
The Big Fix …
Synthetic ammonia at Karlsruhe.
Come down … there’s ammonia!
… You have to see how the liquid
ammonia is pouring out!
Fritz Haber, running through the laboratories in the T. H. Karlsruhe, March
1909.
1
8.1 The Secret Years
Vaclav Smil in his book ‘Enriching the Earth’ maintains;
The synthesis of ammonia belongs to that special group of discoveries –
including Edison’s lightbulb or the Wright brothers’ flight - for which we can
pinpoint the date of the decisive breakthrough …
The BASF archives contain a ‘down-to-earth’ four-page report sent by Prof.
Dr. Fritz Haber to the company’s directors on 03 July 1909 describing the
events of the previous day when Alwin Mittasch and Julius Krantz from
BASF witnessed the continuous production of synthetic ammonia in Haber’s
Karlsruhe laboratory. We can therefore certainly include 02 July 1909 in
Smil’s ‘special group’. But pinpoint this event as we might, it is a poor
substitute for the personal and scientific history that was lost because of the
conditions imposed upon Haber by the BASF. At the time, the development
of the Haber-Le Rossignol process was probably the most demanding technical project ever undertaken in an academic setting,
2 but the principal
players involved in the drama have long since left the stage and the whole
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
D. Sheppard, Robert Le Rossignol, Springer Biographies,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29714-5_8
157
The Big Fix …
Synthetic ammonia at Karlsruhe.
Come down … there’s ammonia!
… You have to see how the liquid
ammonia is pouring out!
Fritz Haber, running through the laboratories in the T. H. Karlsruhe, March
1909.
1
8.1 The Secret Years
Vaclav Smil in his book ‘Enriching the Earth’ maintains;
The synthesis of ammonia belongs to that special group of discoveries –
including Edison’s lightbulb or the Wright brothers’ flight - for which we can
pinpoint the date of the decisive breakthrough …
The BASF archives contain a ‘down-to-earth’ four-page report sent by Prof.
Dr. Fritz Haber to the company’s directors on 03 July 1909 describing the
events of the previous day when Alwin Mittasch and Julius Krantz from
BASF witnessed the continuous production of synthetic ammonia in Haber’s
Karlsruhe laboratory. We can therefore certainly include 02 July 1909 in
Smil’s ‘special group’. But pinpoint this event as we might, it is a poor
substitute for the personal and scientific history that was lost because of the
conditions imposed upon Haber by the BASF. At the time, the development
of the Haber-Le Rossignol process was probably the most demanding technical project ever undertaken in an academic setting,
2 but the principal
players involved in the drama have long since left the stage and the whole
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
D. Sheppard, Robert Le Rossignol, Springer Biographies,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29714-5_8
157