Master Mind: The Rise & Fall of Fritz Haber, the Nobel Laureate Who Launched the Age of Chemical Warfare
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FRITZ HABER — a Nobel laureate in chemistry, a friend of Albert Einstein, a German Jew and World War I hero — may be the most important scientist you have never heard of. The Haber-Bosch process, which he invented at the turn of the twentieth century, revolutionized agriculture by converting nitrogen to fertilizer in quantities massive enough to feed the world. The invention has become an essential pillar for life on earth; some two billion people on our planet could not survive without it. Yet this same process supplied the German military with explosives during World War I, and Haber orchestrated Germany's use of an entirely new weapon — poison gas. Eventually, Haber's efforts led to Zyklon B, the gas later used to kill millions — including Haber's own relatives — in Nazi concentration camps.
Haber is the patron saint of guns and butter, a scientist whose discoveries transformed the way we produce food and fight wars. His legacy is filled with contradictions, as was his personality. For some, he was a benefactor of humanity and devoted friend. For others, he was a war criminal, possessed by raw ambition. An intellectual gunslinger, enamored of technical progress and driven by patriotic devotion to Germany, he was instrumental in the scientific work that inadvertently supported the Nazi cause; a Jew and a German patriot, he was at once an enabler of the Nazi regime and its victim.
Master Mind is a thought-provoking biography of this controversial scientist, a modern Faust who personifies the paradox of science, its ability to create and to destroy. It offers a complete chronicle of his tumultuous and ultimately tragic life, from his childhood and rise to prominence in the heady days of the German Empire to his disgrace and exile at the hands of the Nazis; from early decades as the hero who eliminated the threat of starvation to his lingering legacy as a villain whose work led to the demise of millions.
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Daniel Charles. (2009). Master Mind: The Rise & Fall of Fritz Haber, the Nobel Laureate Who Launched the Age of Chemical Warfare. HarperCollins.
Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)Daniel Charles. 2009. Master Mind: The Rise & Fall of Fritz Haber, the Nobel Laureate Who Launched the Age of Chemical Warfare. HarperCollins.
Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)Daniel Charles, Master Mind: The Rise & Fall of Fritz Haber, the Nobel Laureate Who Launched the Age of Chemical Warfare. HarperCollins, 2009.
MLA Citation (style guide)Daniel Charles. Master Mind: The Rise & Fall of Fritz Haber, the Nobel Laureate Who Launched the Age of Chemical Warfare. HarperCollins, 2009.
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Daniel Charles is the author of Lords of the Harvest: Biotech, Big Money, and the Future of Food and a former technology correspondent for National Public Radio and the New Scientist. He lives in Washington, D.C.
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FRITZ HABER — a Nobel laureate in chemistry, a friend of Albert Einstein, a German Jew and World War I hero — may be the most important scientist you have never heard of. The Haber-Bosch process, which he invented at the turn of the twentieth century, revolutionized agriculture by converting nitrogen to fertilizer in quantities massive enough to feed the world. The invention has become an essential pillar for life on earth; some two billion people on our planet could not survive without it. Yet this same process supplied the German military with explosives during World War I, and Haber orchestrated Germany's use of an entirely new weapon — poison gas. Eventually, Haber's efforts led to Zyklon B, the gas later used to kill millions — including Haber's own relatives — in Nazi concentration camps.
Haber is the patron saint of guns and butter, a scientist whose discoveries transformed the way we produce food and fight wars. His legacy is filled with contradictions, as was his personality. For some, he was a benefactor of humanity and devoted friend. For others, he was a war criminal, possessed by raw ambition. An intellectual gunslinger, enamored of technical progress and driven by patriotic devotion to Germany, he was instrumental in the scientific work that inadvertently supported the Nazi cause; a Jew and a German patriot, he was at once an enabler of the Nazi regime and its victim.
Master Mind is a thought-provoking biography of this controversial scientist, a modern Faust who personifies the paradox of science, its ability to create and to destroy. It offers a complete chronicle of his tumultuous and ultimately tragic life, from his childhood and rise to prominence in the heady days of the German Empire to his disgrace and exile at the hands of the Nazis; from early decades as the hero who eliminated the threat of starvation to his lingering legacy as a villain whose work led to the demise of millions.
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"[A] vivid, fast-paced, economically-written biography." — Library Journal
"Charles depicts Haber's rise and fall in quick, well-considered strokes." — San Francisco Chronicle
"Charles tells [Haber's] story with clarity and vigour." — Financial Times
"[A] thorough, sensitive, beautifully written account.... It is hard to imagine that a more insightful portrait of Haber." — Washington Times
"[A]n outstanding work, and one which should be mandatory reading for critics and cheerleaders of science alike." — New Scientist
"[A] fascinating but sobering tale of a scientist who made a Faustian bargain for success." — Science News
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May 16, 2005
Fritz Haber (1868–1934), winner of the 1918 Nobel Prize for chemistry, was, in Charles's eyes, a "modern Faust": "willing to serve any master who could further his passion for knowledge and progress." Having discovered how to manufacture nitrogen-based fertilizer, which allowed the increase of crop production needed to feed an exploding human population, he also developed the first poison gas, used infamously in WWI at Ypres on April 22, 1915. It's this harrowing moral thicket that most fascinates Charles (Lords of the Harvest
) in this overly sympathetic biography of the first "scientist-warrior." Haber was passionately committed to German nationalism (Jewish by birth, he converted to Christianity in order to assimilate), and he devoted his skills to Germany's cause in WWI. Approximately a week after Ypres Haber's wife, a scientist believed to have opposed the use of poison gas, committed suicide. Charles, a former NPR correspondent, strays from objectivity, frequently offering his own judgments and opinions, and he sees Haber's life as a cautionary tale: "ometimes," he concludes, "it is the duty of an honest scientist" to refuse to put science in the service of national military goals."B&w photos. Agent, Katinka Matson
.
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August 15, 2005
In recent years, the "niche history" genre of science writing has become so common that it can now officially be called formulaic: find an obscure person responsible for some long-forgotten discovery or technical accomplishment and recount his or her successes and setbacks, triumphs and tragedies, all with an eye toward the lessons learned and how the person remains relevant today. Fritz Haber (1868 -1934) -a Nobel prize -winning chemist who synthesized the nitrogen fertilizers that revolutionized the agricultural industry and was chiefly responsible for Germany's World War I chemical weapons program -fits that bill nicely. In this vivid, fast-paced, economically written biography, technology writer Charles ("Lords of the Harvest: Biotechnology, Big Money, and the Future of Food") depicts Haber as a profoundly driven man with strong nationalist loyalties, characteristics that served him in some respects but triggered his downfall in others. Occasional departures from straight biography (where, for example, the author discusses nitrogen's place in contemporary times and its consequences) provide welcome and informative digressions. Niche histories are popular, so this book may well find an audience, but trends in popular science titles tend, by their very nature, to have limited shelf lives. An optional purchase. -Gregg Sapp, Science Lib., SUNY at AlbanyCopyright 2005 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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July 1, 2005
Charles delivers an eminently readable account of German chemist Fritz Haber's life (1868-1934) and precepts. Despite Haber's scientific and financial success--he became wealthy from, and received a Nobel Prize for, his co-invention of the process underlying the chemical fertilizer industry--he ended up disgraced, doubting his own lifelong values. A Jew in imperial Germany, the young Haber enthusiastically embraced the country's high-velocity industrialization and its intense nationalism. Charles' descriptions of Haber's education and positions are enhanced by an astute estimation of his motivations and character: extroverted and not reflective, Haber was optimistic about technology, gregarious, a poor husband, and quite the superpatriot. Seizing the last trait as a tragic flaw, Charles is sympathetic to Haber's fate, if not to the simplicity of his maxims of duty and loyalty, which, despite Haber's vital contributions to Germany's armaments production in World War I, did not protect him from the early stages of Nazi persecution. A perceptively intelligent writer, Charles, one senses, is the biographer Haber would have wanted.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2005, American Library Association.)
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FRITZ HABER — a Nobel laureate in chemistry, a friend of Albert Einstein, a German Jew and World War I hero — may be the most important scientist you have never heard of. The Haber-Bosch process, which he invented at the turn of the twentieth century, revolutionized agriculture by converting nitrogen to fertilizer in quantities massive enough to feed the world. The invention has become an essential pillar for life on earth; some two billion people on our planet could not survive without it. Yet this same process supplied the German military with explosives during World War I, and Haber orchestrated Germany's use of an entirely new weapon — poison gas. Eventually, Haber's efforts led to Zyklon B, the gas later used to kill millions — including Haber's own relatives — in Nazi concentration camps.
Haber is the patron saint of guns and butter, a scientist whose discoveries transformed the way we produce food and fight wars. His legacy is filled with contradictions, as was his...
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