temperature—provided a suitable catalyst could be found—and that such a
conversion would not require the generation of ‘nascent’ nitrogen as had
previously been thought by some. He was also fully aware of the importance
of high pressure,
39 and although he had the ability and technical means to
proceed with experiments that optimised all these variables, he supported the
widely held view at the time that the technical realisation of a gas reaction at
the beginning of red-heat and under high pressure was impossible.
Haber published his results in 1905,
40 he then dismissed the whole episode
and moved on expecting that to be the end of the matter. But his choice to
publish at the higher
41 ammonia yield at 1020 °C was to set in motion a
series of events that began his collaboration with Robert Le Rossignol, that
defined his career as a physical chemist and led to the greatest technological
development of the 20th century. And bye-the-way, had he published at the
lower figure of 0.005%, the ‘Great War’ may well have been ‘over by
Christmas’.
2.11 Haber, Thermodynamics and the ‘Heat
Theorem’
In ‘moving on’, Haber attended to his new book which he dedicated to
another chemist;
To my dear wife Clara Haber Ph.D., in gratitude for her silent co-operation
The book was written as the result of a series of evening lectures delivered to
colleagues and research students at Karlsruhe in February 1905, and it
illustrates Haber’s profound grasp of the theoretical aspects of chemical
thermodynamics at the time.
42 Written in German, Haber’s text was made
available to the wider English-speaking world by Arthur B. Lamb
43 in 1907,
who also incorporated the progress made in the subject in the intervening
years. The book was an outstanding international success, a classic treatise of
high significance. Apart from its influence on teaching, and its systematic
approach to the collection of thermodynamic data, this book was revolutionary in a number of other ways. Firstly, it introduced chemical equations
with fractional numbers of molecules e.g., H 2 + ½O 2 = H 2 O. Secondly, it
coined the expression ‘equilibrium box’ for van’t Hoff’s device that helped
explain how thermodynamics could be used to derive the ‘Law of Mass
58
D. Sheppard
conversion would not require the generation of ‘nascent’ nitrogen as had
previously been thought by some. He was also fully aware of the importance
of high pressure,
39 and although he had the ability and technical means to
proceed with experiments that optimised all these variables, he supported the
widely held view at the time that the technical realisation of a gas reaction at
the beginning of red-heat and under high pressure was impossible.
Haber published his results in 1905,
40 he then dismissed the whole episode
and moved on expecting that to be the end of the matter. But his choice to
publish at the higher
41 ammonia yield at 1020 °C was to set in motion a
series of events that began his collaboration with Robert Le Rossignol, that
defined his career as a physical chemist and led to the greatest technological
development of the 20th century. And bye-the-way, had he published at the
lower figure of 0.005%, the ‘Great War’ may well have been ‘over by
Christmas’.
2.11 Haber, Thermodynamics and the ‘Heat
Theorem’
In ‘moving on’, Haber attended to his new book which he dedicated to
another chemist;
To my dear wife Clara Haber Ph.D., in gratitude for her silent co-operation
The book was written as the result of a series of evening lectures delivered to
colleagues and research students at Karlsruhe in February 1905, and it
illustrates Haber’s profound grasp of the theoretical aspects of chemical
thermodynamics at the time.
42 Written in German, Haber’s text was made
available to the wider English-speaking world by Arthur B. Lamb
43 in 1907,
who also incorporated the progress made in the subject in the intervening
years. The book was an outstanding international success, a classic treatise of
high significance. Apart from its influence on teaching, and its systematic
approach to the collection of thermodynamic data, this book was revolutionary in a number of other ways. Firstly, it introduced chemical equations
with fractional numbers of molecules e.g., H 2 + ½O 2 = H 2 O. Secondly, it
coined the expression ‘equilibrium box’ for van’t Hoff’s device that helped
explain how thermodynamics could be used to derive the ‘Law of Mass
58
D. Sheppard