1
Robert Le Rossignol
Robert Le Rossignol.
Courtesy of the Le Rossignol family and the Royal Society of
Chemistry, London.
The early years, Victoria College, UCL and Ramsay.
To begin, at the beginning. It is spring …
The opening lines from Dylan Thomas’, ‘Under Milk Wood’, 1954.
1.1 Introduction
In Karlsruhe, southern Germany, there is a monument. A twelve-metre steel
tube pointing skywards at the intersection of Engesserstrabe and Fritz
Haber-Weg. Rising among the buildings of the university, it commemorates
the creation of the most influential technology of the 20th century, a technology to which many people on the planet today owe their existence. The
monument is an old ammonia reactor belonging to the nearby BASF
chemical works at Ludwigshafen and it stands in celebration of the ‘fixation’
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
D. Sheppard, Robert Le Rossignol, Springer Biographies,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29714-5_1
3
Robert Le Rossignol
Robert Le Rossignol.
Courtesy of the Le Rossignol family and the Royal Society of
Chemistry, London.
The early years, Victoria College, UCL and Ramsay.
To begin, at the beginning. It is spring …
The opening lines from Dylan Thomas’, ‘Under Milk Wood’, 1954.
1.1 Introduction
In Karlsruhe, southern Germany, there is a monument. A twelve-metre steel
tube pointing skywards at the intersection of Engesserstrabe and Fritz
Haber-Weg. Rising among the buildings of the university, it commemorates
the creation of the most influential technology of the 20th century, a technology to which many people on the planet today owe their existence. The
monument is an old ammonia reactor belonging to the nearby BASF
chemical works at Ludwigshafen and it stands in celebration of the ‘fixation’
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
D. Sheppard, Robert Le Rossignol, Springer Biographies,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29714-5_1
3