Haber had known a woman named Clara Immerwahr for a decade. She was the first woman ever to acquire a doctorate from Breslau’s university. In the visible facts of their life, Haber and Clara had much in common. Both had grown up within Breslau’s Jewish community, though neither had ever been religiously observant. Clara was two years younger. Haber persuaded her to link her life with his but she was filled with misgivings. Clara initially turned down Haber’s proposal, saying that she “wasn’t the right sort for marriage” before finally accepting it. In August of 1901, Fritz and Clara were married.
For Haber, marriage was one more step along the path he’d already been traveling. He threw himself into research with even greater passion. For Clara, on the other hand, it provoked a crisis of identity. She had abandoned her tenuous position in the world of science and had become a professor’s wife, responsible for running a household, cooking, cleaning, washing, and mending. She felt trapped, unable to pursue her intellectual passions and unable to find satisfaction in her newly assigned role.
They had a son in 1902 who was named Hermann. Throughout his life, Fritz Haber never really found domestic peace or a stable balance between professional and family life. He sometimes spoke of family as something confining, as the enemy of true friendship and the “murderer of talent.” Clara Haber’s letters display a striking contrast in tone. When discussing chemistry, or professional disputes among colleagues, her writing is animated, lively, and confident. When the topic turns to domestic and personal affairs, she seems frustrated and frequently seized by dark moods.
The breadth of Haber's interests continued to amaze and confound his colleagues. During 1904 and 1905, Haber published seventeen different papers in half a dozen different journals. He wrote one more book, his last and most successful one, called Thermodynamics of Technical Gas Reactions. Haber had become by this time one of the most accomplished physical chemists in all of Germany. He seemed to recognize no limits either to his time or his talents. But his home life was not too happy. Clara saw limits and dangers where Fritz saw none. His inability to economize, either with time or money, produced constant friction.
He then discovered a chemical reaction that would shape an epoch. It was known that plants needed nitrogen to ensure proper growth and atmospheric nitrogen was not available to them. Haber turned his attention to finding out such a reaction due to a fortuitous set of circumstances. One was scientific rivalry with a scientist named Walther Nernst who was a dominant figure in their field. Haber envied Nernst, and resented him because he had slighted him for earlier research into fixing atmospheric nitrogen.
An extraordinary scientist named Robert Le Rossignol joined Haber’s laboratory and helped in the design of new experimental equipment. He then acquired a compressor that was able to squeeze mixtures of hydrogen and nitrogen gas to pressures two hundred times greater than normal atmospheric pressure along with extreme heat. Finally, Haber acquired a new and powerful industrial partner, BASF, Germany’s largest chemical company. The BASF funded Haber personally and if Haber’s work led to commercial production, he was to receive royalty payments equal to 10 percent of the company’s net profits from his discoveries.
The third week of March 1909 brought the miracle. Haber combined nitrogen and hydrogen to produce ammonia. Essentially the same process that Haber discovered is being followed even now in much larger equipments. Worldwide, nearly a hundred million tons of nitrogen are now taken from the air each year, converted into ammonia, and spread across the surface of the earth as fertilizer. About half the people on earth could not survive in the absence of the chemical reaction discovered by Haber.
But the problem with most biological processes is that the benefits are immediately apparent but the costs are long term and thus remain hidden for a long time. Nitrates pollute groundwater supplies in many farming areas. Nitrogen oxides in the air turn into ozone, harming both humans and plant life. Leftover fertilizer is slowly killing streams, lakes, and coastal ecosystems across the northern hemisphere. Runaway nutrients from farmers’ fields are feeding blooms of algae that cloud the water, suck up oxygen, and suffocate fish. When the fish die, birds that feed on them soon disappear. Plant species that thrive in the presence of nitrogen start growing uncontrollably, crowding out other plants. The result is a depleted ecosystem, supporting a less rich and complex web of life.
But this is not the end of Haber's story. The reclusive banker Leopold Koppel wanted to setup a Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for physical chemistry. He wanted Fritz Haber to become the institute’s founding director. In negotiations with the government, he made sure that Haber’s institute would be allowed to apply for patents on its discoveries. Never again would his life be fully devoted to personally exploring mysteries of the material world because of the logistical challenge of building and running his institute, hiring scientists, and managing its budget.
He was attracted by Berlin’s symbols of power, honor, and national influence and he never seriously considered leaving it. As a member of the nation’s elite, he also accepted its assumptions: that his nation, surrounded by enemies, demanded his loyalty; that its growing military might serve the cause of peace; that the nation, if united, could never be defeated. The state’s goals defined his own. Nation, government, and emperor, in Haber’s mind, were one. He was honored and duty-bound to serve them.
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