Both disillusioned and stimulated by deficiencies in his education, he
decided to return to university and in 1892 he attended the Eidgenössische
Technische Hochschule Zürich (the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) to
study ‘cutting edge’ chemical technology under a family friend, George
Lunge. But he stayed for a just single semester, blaming an authoritarian
teacher for his demise. By now all of Haber’s dreams were crushed. Every
route that he followed within his chosen subject led to mediocrity. He had
been permitted to study widely but he had achieved little. His best efforts had
opened few doors and just one remained, the same one as when he started.
Depressingly, he had to return to Breslau to face a lifetime in his father’s
trade. In the spring of 1892, he began his apprenticeship.
Fritz Haber’s volatile, eclectic nature was ill suited to Siegfried’s sedate
business. The two clashed constantly over the direction the company should
take and within six months a poorly thought out business decision
20 by Fritz
convinced Siegfried of the complete failure of their collaboration. Removed
by his father as a ‘danger to the business’, Haber once more had the luxury to
determine his direction in life. This freedom pointed him to academia,
probably influenced by the dullness of his early experiences of industry and by
the success of his friend Richard Abegg who had earlier secured a position
with Wilhelm Ostwald at Leipzig, progressing from there to work with
Nernst and Arrhenius. Ostwald’s field of physical chemistry was by then
widely regarded as the basis of chemistry and chemical technology and it was
hugely engaging for Haber, but with an unremarkable degree and little to
show for his studies, the time was not yet right to enter this field. Haber’s
experience of organic chemistry however, convinced him that synthetic
chemicals would eventually replace the naturally occurring dyes that his
father’s business was founded upon. Possibly driven by this goal, he chose to
continue his study of organic chemistry, but this time under Ludwig Knorr at
Jena university, and for the next two years he became an unpaid assistant in
Knorr’s laboratory.
2.5 Jena, First Steps on the Academic Ladder
Even if his decision was driven by the possible discovery of synthetic dyes, his
lot at Jena was to investigate the structure of ‘diacetosuccinnic ester’ (the
methyl ester of butanedioic acid). Knorr helped Haber to write his first paper
on the subject but once again, as under Bunsen, the minutia of experimentation and the meticulous application of orthodox laboratory procedure(s) left
Haber unsatisfied and impatient. Jena was a decidedly third-rate German
2 Fritz Haber and Karlsruhe
45
decided to return to university and in 1892 he attended the Eidgenössische
Technische Hochschule Zürich (the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) to
study ‘cutting edge’ chemical technology under a family friend, George
Lunge. But he stayed for a just single semester, blaming an authoritarian
teacher for his demise. By now all of Haber’s dreams were crushed. Every
route that he followed within his chosen subject led to mediocrity. He had
been permitted to study widely but he had achieved little. His best efforts had
opened few doors and just one remained, the same one as when he started.
Depressingly, he had to return to Breslau to face a lifetime in his father’s
trade. In the spring of 1892, he began his apprenticeship.
Fritz Haber’s volatile, eclectic nature was ill suited to Siegfried’s sedate
business. The two clashed constantly over the direction the company should
take and within six months a poorly thought out business decision
20 by Fritz
convinced Siegfried of the complete failure of their collaboration. Removed
by his father as a ‘danger to the business’, Haber once more had the luxury to
determine his direction in life. This freedom pointed him to academia,
probably influenced by the dullness of his early experiences of industry and by
the success of his friend Richard Abegg who had earlier secured a position
with Wilhelm Ostwald at Leipzig, progressing from there to work with
Nernst and Arrhenius. Ostwald’s field of physical chemistry was by then
widely regarded as the basis of chemistry and chemical technology and it was
hugely engaging for Haber, but with an unremarkable degree and little to
show for his studies, the time was not yet right to enter this field. Haber’s
experience of organic chemistry however, convinced him that synthetic
chemicals would eventually replace the naturally occurring dyes that his
father’s business was founded upon. Possibly driven by this goal, he chose to
continue his study of organic chemistry, but this time under Ludwig Knorr at
Jena university, and for the next two years he became an unpaid assistant in
Knorr’s laboratory.
2.5 Jena, First Steps on the Academic Ladder
Even if his decision was driven by the possible discovery of synthetic dyes, his
lot at Jena was to investigate the structure of ‘diacetosuccinnic ester’ (the
methyl ester of butanedioic acid). Knorr helped Haber to write his first paper
on the subject but once again, as under Bunsen, the minutia of experimentation and the meticulous application of orthodox laboratory procedure(s) left
Haber unsatisfied and impatient. Jena was a decidedly third-rate German
2 Fritz Haber and Karlsruhe
45