If you liked the Poisoner's Handbook, then you'll probably enjoy The Alchemy of Air by Thomas Hager. It's about the Haber-Bosch process, which made it possible to produce artificial ammonia using nitrogen in the atmosphere.
The reaction was something I learned in college chemistry, and I just appreciated it for its simplicity (3H2 + N2 at 500atm --> 2NH3) but Hager explains just how important it was in changing the course of world history. Fixed nitrogen (i.e. ammonium and nitrate salts) are essential for agriculture, and before the Haber-Bosch process, humanity could only get them from natural sources. By the end of the 19th Century the population was quickly getting so large that eventually all of the arable land on earth would be unable to sustain it. Fritz Haber discovered that hydrogen and nitrogen could be reacted at high pressure and temperature to get ammonia, and Carl Bosch was the guy who figured out how to scale up that reaction to an industrial scale. Without them, a third of the people living today would starve to death. But there's a dark side, because those same nitrates are also used to make explosives. Their invention saved billions of lives, but it also provided their native Germany with means to wage two world wars.
It's a really interesting exploration of how technology is good or evil depending on how it's used. It doesn't go into great detail about the chemistry involved, but instead focuses on how big a problem the nitrate shortage was in the 19th Century, and how revolutionary the solution was in the 20th. It also has a fascinating human element. Haber, like many German Jews in the 1910's, hoped to use his scientific career to gain acceptance as a patriotic German. His breakthrough seemed to be a dream come true, but then the Nazis took over, and he soon realized that he would be rejected no matter what he accomplished or how hard he tried to assimilate.
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Date: 2011-12-21 01:14 pm (UTC)The reaction was something I learned in college chemistry, and I just appreciated it for its simplicity (3H2 + N2 at 500atm --> 2NH3) but Hager explains just how important it was in changing the course of world history. Fixed nitrogen (i.e. ammonium and nitrate salts) are essential for agriculture, and before the Haber-Bosch process, humanity could only get them from natural sources. By the end of the 19th Century the population was quickly getting so large that eventually all of the arable land on earth would be unable to sustain it. Fritz Haber discovered that hydrogen and nitrogen could be reacted at high pressure and temperature to get ammonia, and Carl Bosch was the guy who figured out how to scale up that reaction to an industrial scale. Without them, a third of the people living today would starve to death. But there's a dark side, because those same nitrates are also used to make explosives. Their invention saved billions of lives, but it also provided their native Germany with means to wage two world wars.
It's a really interesting exploration of how technology is good or evil depending on how it's used. It doesn't go into great detail about the chemistry involved, but instead focuses on how big a problem the nitrate shortage was in the 19th Century, and how revolutionary the solution was in the 20th. It also has a fascinating human element. Haber, like many German Jews in the 1910's, hoped to use his scientific career to gain acceptance as a patriotic German. His breakthrough seemed to be a dream come true, but then the Nazis took over, and he soon realized that he would be rejected no matter what he accomplished or how hard he tried to assimilate.