[Athena] CHC rappel séance du jeudi 15 mai: conférence du Professeur J. Gal sur Fritz Haber

[dymfau2 <dymfau2 AT orange.fr>]

Jeudi 15 mai 2014. 14h. Conférence

 

Séance du Club d’histoire de la chimie de la Société chimique de France

250 rue Saint-Jacques, Paris Ve

Fritz Haber, His Life and Work, Chemical Weapons of World War I,

and the Morality of Science

Professeur Joseph Gal, University of Colorado, Denver

American Chemical Society, History of Chemistry

 

German chemist Fritz Haber (1868-1934) was born in Breslau, eastern Prussia (today Wroclaw, Poland), shortly before the unification of Germany in 1871. He earned his doctorate in 1891 at the University of Berlin with a dissertation in organic chemistry entitled "Über einige Derivate des Piperonals" (under Carl Liebermann). In 1893 he converted from Judaism to Christianity. In 1894 he began an academic career at the Karlsruhe Technische Hochschule, switching to physical chemistry and electrochemistry, and in 1906 was named professor ("ordinarius"). In 1901 Haber married Clara Immerwahr, also a chemist with a doctorate (perhaps the first woman with a chemistry doctorate in Germany), who had a similar background. They had a son, Hermann (1902-1946). In 1910 Haber achieved his first great success: the "fixation of nitrogen" (synthesis of ammonia from its elements), an immensely beneficial invention that has saved countless millions from starvation and death by providing unlimited quantities of nitrogen fertilizer for food production. Haber's invention was adapted to the industrial-scale production of ammonia and nitric acid by a team led by Carl Bosch (Nobel laureate, 1932) at BASF. In 1911 Haber was appointed director of the prestigious Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry in Berlin and was named professor of chemistry at the University of Berlin.

World War I (WWI) began in August, 1914, and Haber's ammonia synthesis became indispensable to Germany's war effort since it also provides nitrates, the ingredients of conventional explosives. During the war Haber led the development of chemical weapons (“poison gases”) and showed no moral reservations about their use in war, and little sympathy for the victims. Ca. 92000 were killed by the poisons in the war and many more were injured, often condemned to a lifetime of suffering. Predictably, the Allies responded with their own chemical weapons, and altogether ca. 3000 compounds were evaluated by the two sides as potential weapons, and ca. 25-30 were used in the war. They included chlorine, mustard "gas" (ypérite), phosgene, trichloromethyl chloroformate ("diphosgene"), chloropicrin, xylyl bromide, arsenicals, etc. Chemists and other scientists participated in large numbers in the development of chemical weapons in WWI, e.g., W. Nernst (Nobel 1920), O. Hahn (Nobel 1944), G. Hertz (Nobel 1925), J. Franck (Nobel 1925), V. Grignard (Nobel 1912), Ch. Moureu, W.J. Pope, R. Adams, G.N. Lewis, E. Paternò, etc. But some refused to participate in chemical-weapons development, e.g., H. Staudinger (Nobel 1953), M. Born (Nobel 1954), and E. Rutherford (Nobel 1908). In the end, chemical weapons were not decisive in the war. Haber's wife Clara bitterly opposed her husband's poison-gas work; she was also distressed by his tyrannical behavior and lack of support for her aspirations for a career in chemistry. She committed suicide on May 2^nd, 1915, ten days after the first poison-gas attack by Germany. Haber remarried (Charlotte, née Nathan, 1917) and they had a daughter (Eva, 1918) and a son (Ludwig 1920-2004). Haber received the 1918 Nobel Prize in chemistry for the ammonia synthesis.

Germany's defeat in WWI resulted in economic devastation and social and political cataclysm, one result of which was the rise of Hitler and the Nazis. After WWI, fearing prosecution by the Allies for war crimes, Haber fled to Switzerland, but the crisis passed and he returned. He then engaged in chemical weapons development (illegally), attempted to isolate gold from sea water (to pay for the severe Allies reparations demands), and developed pesticides, including Zyklon B (containing hydrogen cyanide), which was later provided to the SS by the infamous IG Farben company and used to murder ca. 1.5 million victims in the gas chambers, including one of Haber's nieces, her husband, and their two sons.

By the 1930s, Haber was in poor health (heart disease, chronic insomnia). The Nazi law of April 1933 for the "purification of the civil service" banned the civil-service employment of "non-Aryans", political opponents of the regime, and other "undesirables". Thousands of civil servants, professors, doctors, etc., were dismissed. At first Haber was exempted, but he resigned and left Germany. He died in January, 1934, in a hotel room in Basel, Switzerland. He was a brilliant and versatile chemist with great scientific achievements, but he was insensitive to the needs and desires of those closest to him; he was blind to the suffering caused by the poison gases; he ignored the realities in Germany, with tragic personal consequences. His life raises grave questions of morality in human conduct and in science in particular. One such question concerns the silence and acquiescence of German professors, intellectuals, etc., in the face of the dismissal of their colleagues by the law of April 1933. Another relates to the continued use of poison weapons, to this day. Finally, should scientists refuse to develop weapons of mass destruction? Today, in 2014 – the centenary of the outbreak of WWI – these questions merit further discussion.

 

Autres travaux du Pr. J. Gal :

Commémoration Louis Pasteur : Conférence à l’ENS le 11 octobre 2013: http://savoirs.ens.fr/conferencier.php?id=1431 ; http://savoirs.ens.fr/expose.php?id=1487

http://www.ucdenver.edu/academics/colleges/medicalschool/departments/medicine/ClinicalPharmacologyToxicology/Pages/JoeGal.aspx

 

Lieu de la conférence : Au siège de la Société Chimique de France, 250 rue Saint-Jacques, 75005 Paris

Accès : RER B, station Luxembourg ; Métro Odéon, Saint-Michel ; Bus 38, 82, 21, 27, 84, 89.

Entrée libre. Contact : danielle.fauque AT u-psud.fr