Haber, Fritz

Haber, Fritz

20th Century
Born: Breslau (Germany), 1868 
Died: Basel (Switzerland), 1934 
After studying chemistry and spending some years as an industrial chemist, in 1898 he became professor in Karlsruhe, 1911 director of the Max-Planck-Institute (KWI) for physical and electrochemistry in Berlin. In 1908 he succeeded in synthesising ammonia in a small scale (Haber-Bosch-synthesis) which was the beginning of high pressure chemistry. Later he did research on gas spectra. During World War I he advocated the use of poison-gases as weapons. In 1933 he was forced to leave Germany because of his Jewish descent. In 1918 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for chemistry.

  The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1918
"for the synthesis of ammonia from its elements"