When We Cease to Understand the World

Fritz Haber is a German chemist. He has Jewish ancestry but converts to Lutheranism at 25. The first chapter, “Prussian Blue,” describes his work developing some of the first chemical weapons used during World War I, chlorine gas. Haber is a “man of genius, and the only one, perhaps, capable of understanding the complex molecular reactions that would blacken the skin of the five thousand soldiers who died at Ypres” (26). Haber is unrepentant about the death he causes during wartime, because he is a committed scientist and nationalist. After Ypres, he throws a two-day party for his and his nation’s great success, at the end of which his wife dies by suicide. Although he does not feel guilty for his wartime actions, he is haunted by his wife’s death. In 1907, Haber develops a method for obtaining nitrogen from the air, which is used by the industrialist Carl Bosch to develop artificial fertilizer. As revealed in a letter to his wife, he feels guilty about this discovery because he worries that, as a result of this new nitrogen-rich environment, plants will take over the world if there is a decrease in population levels.

Haber is scientifically ambitious. After discovering how to artificially derive nitrogen, he travels the world, attempting to discover a process to harvest gold from the sea.