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Reach out your hands and look at your skin.
Touch your muscles again, they are made of protein. The core of protein is amino acid, and the core of amino acid is Nitrogen.

Although 78% of the air is nitrogen, humans are extremely sad: we cannot eat air directly.
We can only rely on plants to fix nitrogen in the soil and turn it into food, which we then eat.

Before the 20th century, there was an upper limit to the Earth's carrying capacity. Natural fertilizers (guano, saltpeter) are not enough. Scientists have predicted that by 1930, mankind will face a global famine.

Just when humans were about to starve to death, Fritz Haber appeared.
He used an extremely violent method to tear apart the defense line of nitrogen atoms in the air, freeing mankind from the fate of "depending on the sky for food".

But it was this man who personally turned chemistry into a tool of massacre.


1. The ultimate secret of the alchemist: turning air into bread

Before Hubble, chemists had nothing to do with nitrogen.
The "triple bond" (N≡N) formed by two nitrogen atoms holding hands is one of the strongest chemical bonds in nature. It is like a couple who are devoted to each other, unbreakable. No matter you burn it with fire or chop it with electricity, they refuse to separate and react with other elements.

This leads to: We guard the golden mountain of air, but we are still digging in the ground for food.

In 1909, Harper did something outrageous.
He applied 200 atmospheres to the reaction vessel, heated it to 500°C, and then threw in expensive osmium as a catalyst.
Under such extreme torture, the nitrogen atom finally succumbed. They were forced to let go and combined with hydrogen atoms to turn into a pungent gas - Ammonia.

With ammonia, fertilizer can be made.
With the use of chemical fertilizers, wheat yields have doubled.

This is simply a miracle. Harper declared: "I made bread out of the air."
To this day, half of the food production on earth is attributed to the Haber-Bosch Process.
In other words, if this technology had not been invented, the current world population would have been halved, and you and I would most likely not have had a chance to be born.

2. From bread to dynamite, only one step away

However, chemistry is neutral, but human hearts are not.
Haber was a German Jew, but he was an extreme German nationalist. He wanted too much to integrate into mainstream German society and to prove "I am useful to the German Empire."

In 1914, World War I broke out.
The British Royal Navy blocked the sea routes, and Germany could not import Chilean saltpeter. Normally, Germany would soon run out of gunpowder and the war would be over within a few months.

However, Germany did not surrender.
Because Harper stepped up. He modified the fertilizer plant slightly.
Ammonia, when oxidized, becomes nitric acid; nitric acid is the raw material of explosives (TNT).

The factory that was originally used to "save lives" instantly turned into a "killing" arsenal.
A steady stream of ammonia was sent to the front lines and turned into artillery shells. Haber single-handedly allowed Germany to drag out the First World War for four years, resulting in millions more deaths.

3. The greenish-yellow ghost of Ypres

If he was just making explosives, Haber would be just an ordinary military expert.
But he crossed a line that no human being has ever crossed before.

In 1915, the war was at a stalemate. Haber proposed to the German military leaders: "Why not use poison gas?"
Some old-school generals thought this was too mean and contrary to the spirit of chivalry. But Haber insisted: "In war, death is death, there is no difference between being poisoned and being blown up. I want to end the war as soon as possible."

April 22, 1915, the front line at Ypres, Belgium.
Following the direction of the wind, Haber personally directed and opened the valves of 6,000 cylinders.
168 tons of chlorine gas formed a yellow-green poisonous cloud several meters high, floating towards the Allied positions like the cloak of death.

The British and French soldiers on the opposite side had never seen this battle before. As soon as they caught a whiff of pineapple and pepper, their lungs began to burn violently, they coughed up pink foam, and died in painful suffocation.
That day, 5,000 people died and 15,000 were permanently disabled.

Harper became famous (or infamous) in one fight. He is revered as the "Father of Chemical Warfare".
He even formulated the famous "Hubble's Law" (C×t=k), which was used to calculate the relationship between the concentration of poisonous gas and the time to death, as calmly as if he was calculating a mathematical problem.

4. Wife’s Gunshot

Haber's madness makes even the people closest to him unable to stand it.
His wife, Clara Immerwahr, was also a talented Ph.D. in chemistry (she was the first female Ph.D. at the University of Breslau).

Clara strongly opposed her husband's research on poison gas. She denounced this as "scientific depravity" and "barbaric behavior."
But Haber wouldn't listen at all. He was immersed in the joy of being awarded the rank of "captain" and was preparing to go to the Eastern Front battlefield to command the next poison gas attack.

On May 1, 1915, it was the night when Harper held a celebration banquet.
Desperate, Clara picked up Harper's military pistol, walked into the garden, shot herself in the chest.

There was a gunshot.
Clara died in her son's arms.

But the most chilling thing is: The next morning, as if nothing had happened, Haber left his wife Weihan's body behind and rushed to the Eastern Front battlefield as originally planned to release more poison gas.
This man's heart is colder than the ammonia he synthesized.

5. The cruel boomerang of fate

In 1918, Germany was defeated.
Harper was on the wanted list as a war criminal, but he escaped. What's even more outrageous is that this year, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences actually wanted to award him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

The reason is very good: his invention of synthetic ammonia saved the world's food crisis.
Despite protests from scientists around the world, Haber accepted the award. This is the most controversial event in the history of the Nobel Prize.

But the reckoning of fate, although late, is never absent.
In 1933, Hitler came to power.
The Nazis began to purge the Jews. Although Haber was a fervent patriot and despite his great service to Germany, he was still a Jew.

He was deported and went into exile.
In 1934, this talented chemist, suffering from the pain of being abandoned by his motherland, suffered a heart attack in a hotel in Switzerland and died alone.

Is the story over? No.
During his lifetime, Harper invented a cyanide-containing gas called Zyklon B in order to develop pesticides.
After his death, the Nazi SS discovered the gas's effectiveness.

In the Auschwitz concentration camp, the Nazis used Zyklon B** invented by Haber to massacre millions of Jews - including even Haber's own relatives and great-nephews.

He wanted to be a "good German" all his life, but in the end, his invention killed his own people.


Conclusion

Nowhere in the history of science will we find a more divided soul than Haber.

On the one hand, he is an angel.
If synthetic ammonia had not been invented, half of the population on earth today would disappear due to starvation. You and I can sit here and check our phones and have a full meal, but we have to kowtow to him.

On the other hand, he is the devil.
He opened Pandora's box and allowed such dirty things as chemical weapons to accompany mankind from now on.

This is the "Hubble Paradox":
Science can turn devils into angels, and it can also turn angels into devils. What determines all this is never the chemical bonds in the test tube, but the hand holding the test tube.