However, during World War I, the German physicist Fritz Haber, who invented poison gas weapons and killed tens of millions of people, won the Nobel Prize after the war.

Nobel Prize was awarded in the early days of its establishment, and its targets were people who have made great contributions to various fields of mankind, including peace.

However, during World War I , a German physicist Fritz Haber , who invented the poison gas weapon, killed tens of millions of people, won the Nobel Prize after the war.

At that time, as the main researcher of poison gas , Harbour was included in the list of war criminals by the victorious country. However, Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences announced against the public that Harbour was the winner of Nobel Prize in Chemistry .

This decision not only caused protests from the victorious countries of , but also many scientists believed that Harber was a shame for the Germans and even all mankind.

At the subsequent Nobel Prize ceremony, a French winner even criticized Harber for not being worthy of winning the Nobel Prize.

Why did the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences insist on giving the award to Fritz Haber when people generally objected?

Artificial nitrogen fixation

Although the poisonous gas created by Fritz Harber killed countless people, he also provided the world with "bread". Many people are still willing to call him the "father of chemical warfare " who feeds 2 billion people.

Fritz Haber was born in a Jewish family in Germany in 1868. His mother died early and his father was a dye merchant and he had a lot of assets.

As the eldest son of the family, Haber has attached great importance to his education since he was a child, and hopes that Haber can take over the family's industry in the future.

But unexpectedly, since Harber came into contact with the chemistry course in middle school, he has developed a strong interest in chemistry and is often obsessed with doing some small experiments at home.

After graduating from high school, Harber went to Berlin , Heidelberg , Zurich and other places alone to study organic chemistry.

Later, under the guidance of the famous chemist Hoffmann, Harber successfully completed a paper on organic chemistry, and thus was awarded a doctorate degree by the Royal University of Technology in Germany, which is enough to show his intelligence.

For the field of chemistry he loves, Huber not only masters a lot of theoretical knowledge, but also goes to some chemical factories many times to gain technical experience. During

, Hub went home to run the family business at his father's request, but the father and son often had conflicts due to different ideas. Hub felt deeply that he did not have the talent to do business, so he firmly devoted himself to academic research.

In 1896, Harbor began to stay in school as an extra-staff lecturer. In his several years of teaching experience, Harbor moved from organic chemistry to studying physical chemistry, which was a small achievement, and what made him completely famous was because of - nitrogen .

nitrogen is the element with the most content in the air, and it is also an indispensable raw material for the production of fertilizer , explosives and pesticides. The chemical properties of

nitrogen are very stable, but it is difficult to directly use it as fertilizer by plants. At that time, although there were nitrate minerals that could be used to make nitrogen-containing fertilizers, this mineral's mining cost is relatively high and the reserves are limited. Most of the nitrate minerals mined will be used to make gunpowder and will not be used in agricultural production.

With the promotion of industrialization in European countries, the rapid population growth has been far greater than the supply of food. At this time, it is necessary to increase crop yields, which undoubtedly requires the supply of a large amount of fertilizer.

At this time, many European and American countries can only put their ideas on animal feces, especially bird feces, which contain a lot of ammonia and urea , which is a very good fertilizer.

For this reason, bird droppings have once become a rare item that countries are scrambling to grab. Many countries even fight for bird droppings on islands, commonly known as the "Bird Dolphin War".

However, natural fertilizer such as bird droppings is also dug up. If new fertilizers cannot be found, Europe's grain production will inevitably drop sharply, which will trigger a food crisis.

In September 898, the famous British physicist and chemist Crooks publicly confirmed this at a meeting.

In Crooks' view, only by finding new fertilizers can Europeans be rescued from the food crisis. Therefore, Crooks immediately called on scientists from all over the European countries to take action and use the most nitrogen in the air to make nitrogen-containing fertilizers.

nitrogen-containing fertilizer is not difficult to make. In fact, before this, scientists have studied the nitrogen-containing chemical fertilizer ammonium sulfate , but due to limited output, it cannot meet the needs of a country's agricultural production.

After that, scientists from European countries decided to start studying artificial nitrogen fixation , and later proposed that nitrogen and hydrogen in the air can be synthesized into ammonia for raw materials for making fertilizers.

However, there are often explosions when doing synthesis of ammonia experiments, which is relatively high, so several scientists have chosen to give up.

and the person who finally successfully completed the research results of synthesis of ammonia is Fritz Haber .

toxic gas research

In fact, Harber did not study nitrogen at the beginning, and his early research direction was electrochemical .

Later in 1902, when Huber went to the American Electrochemistry Society to attend the annual meeting, he accidentally visited a factory that was studying nitrogen fixation . At this time, Huber developed a little interest in artificial nitrogen fixation.

After returning to Germany, Haber began to study artificial nitrogen fixation using arc method. Two years have passed, but unfortunately, Haber's experiment has not made any progress, and the method of artificial nitrogen fixation using arc method ended in failure.

1904, Huber turned to studying the synthesis of ammonia. During this period, because the experiment was difficult and there was less ammonia produced from nitrogen and hydrogen. Huber gradually lost hope for this study and planned to give up. He then disclosed some of his data in the experiment.

An unexpected thing happened. Another German physicist Nest , who is also studying synthesis of ammonia, questioned Haber's experimental data, believing that his data was full of errors.

Nest's doubts and criticism were an insult to Harber, a physicist, so Harber decided to pick up his research on synthetic ammonia again.

From then on, Haber plunged into the school's laboratory to specialize in the research on synthesis of ammonia.

909, in countless experiments, Haber successfully studied the synthetic ammonia from nitrogen and hydrogen.

Since then, 80% of the world's synthetic ammonia has been used to produce chemical fertilizers. Nowadays, urea, ammonium nitrate, and other nitrogen-containing composite fertilizers often used by farmers to farm.

It is undeniable that the emergence of synthetic ammonia greatly increased the yield of grain, so some people believed that Haber , the inventor of synthetic ammonia, feeds nearly half of the world's population.

As the first physicist to produce ammonia from the air, Haber became famous in one fell swoop.

1910, Harber officially disclosed some of his research on synthesis of ammonia at the meeting of the Alliance of Natural Scientists.

At the same time, scientists from Britain, the United States, France and other countries came to Harbor's laboratory to study. In 1911, when Harbor was a professor at the University of Berlin, he was invited to serve as director of the Institute of Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry of Emperor William. During

, Harber also became friends with the great physicist Einstein who is also in Berlin.

No surprise, if you follow this life trajectory, Haber will have better development in the future, but all this was broken by the sudden war.

914, after the outbreak of World War I, the German army launched an attack on France. After being stubbornly resisted by the British and French coalition forces, both sides fell into a state of anxiety.

At that time, the German people had already shouted the slogan "Fight for Germany and be irreconcilable with Britain and France". In the invisible smoke of gunpowder in China, many bigwigs from the German scientific community got involved and supported the German war.

At this call, Haber stopped the research at his hands and began to serve the German army with his own laboratory.

From then on, Haber's experiments were no longer just academic research.

In order to repel the Russian, French, and British allies that were fighting against Germany as soon as possible, the German military began to consider using poison gas to fight. The first person they found was Nernst, and he would do the experimental research on poison gas.

1914, Harber also added poison gas research. At first, they added irritating substances such as tear gas to bullets and shells, but when they used it, they found that the effect was not great, so they began to study more irritating poison gas.

1914, while Harber and his team were studying poison gas in the laboratory, the chemical reaction caused an explosion, and Harber's assistant was killed on the spot.

But this incident did not stop Huber from studying poison gas.

After that, Haber first proposed to the German military that chlorine gas (strongly irritating highly toxic gas ) can be stored in a cylinder and then taken to the battlefield to release.

With the support of the German army, Haber began to be fully responsible for the production of chlorine. There is no doubt that the power of chlorine on the battlefield gave Haber a great surprise.

Chemical weapons on the battlefield

On April 22, 1915, in the territory of Belgium, Haber personally went to the front battlefield to guide the German army to release more than 100 tons of chlorine to the British and French coalition positions.

This move can be said to have caught everyone off guard. After all, this is the first time in human history to use chemical weapons on the battlefield.

Without any preparation, as the yellow smoke spread, the British and French coalition forces began to be in chaos. Many soldiers hurriedly dropped their guns and wanted to escape, but in the end they died of extreme pain in the "air bomb".

German army won a battle of smoke without any effort, killing thousands of people, and Haber, who created poison gas, was commended by the German emperor for this.

At that time, according to the German regulations, Harber, as a Jew, could not be an officer in the army, but because of the success of the poison gas war, Harber was not only awarded the rank of army captain, but also the Iron Cross.

In the German army, every soldier was honored to receive this medal. Harber was the same. After that, he was even more eager to use chemical means to serve the country.

But the difference is that Harbour's wife Clara Imeval strongly opposes her husband's introduction of chemical weapons to the battlefield.

Since Harber first developed poison gas for the German army, Clara often quarreled with Harber over this matter, but Harber always insisted on studying poison gas.

After being rewarded by the German emperor, Haber held a celebration banquet at home. While drinking, Clara looked at Haber with spring faces and felt a sense of powerlessness in her heart, and then picked up her pistol and committed suicide.

Unfortunately, his wife's death did not awaken the already infatuated Haber. He returned to the front line before he even had time to organize his wife's funeral.

At the same time, after Haber's poison gas war, other participating countries all tasted the power of chemical weapons, and began to study poison gas and used it on the battlefield.

1916, France used phosgene bombs (asphyxiating poison) on the battlefield.

The German army immediately sent Haber to be responsible for the research on the poison gas bomb.

After that, Germany also specially formed an independent chemical warfare unit led by Haber, responsible for the research and supply of poison gas. is happy with this work and devotes himself to poison gas research.

917, in Harber's research, the German army brought the most lethal mustard gas to the battlefield, and countless soldiers died in pain with festering all over their bodies.

Unfortunately, even though Germany took the lead in using poison gas, it still did not escape the fate of defeat.

After the end of battle, Haber, as the main person in charge of the German gas war, was first severely criticized by the international community, accusing him of committing heinous crimes against humanity.

In addition, the victorious country also included Haber on the list of war criminals, but it was in this case that Haber won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the synthetic ammonia he had previously developed.

This news caused a thousand waves, because Harber's gas war in World War I, scientists from Britain, France and other countries publicly expressed their opposition to his award.

But according to Nobel's will, the first selection criteria for the Nobel Prize is "people who make good contributions to mankind". from the perspective of science itself, , Haber's synthetic ammonia does meet this standard, and it is understandable that he won the Nobel Prize.

So Harber finally won the controversial award for this .

After that, Haber returned to his academic research, but all this was broken after 933 Hitler took power.

The German Nazi Party came to power and abused the Jews in a big way. The poison gas developed by Haber was used on his compatriots, and millions of people died because of this. He himself was forced to leave the country he once served.

934, Harber died of a heart attack in Swiss .

Conclusion

In Harber's work in chemical research, Some people think he is an angel, some people think he is a devil, he can research chemical fertilizers that increase grain production, and he can also study poison gas that kills people.

These two seemingly opposite substances confirm what Harber once said: " In peacetime, scientists belong to the world, but in wartime, they only belong to their own motherland. "

Haber is a very patriotic person, but unfortunately, as a Jew, he was ruthlessly abandoned by Germany.

As Einstein said, Harber's life was a tragedy of the German Jews - a tragedy of unrequited love.