Fritz Haber was a German physical chemist. He was the winner of the 1918 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his successful work on nitrogen fixation.
Haber was born on 9th December 1868 in Poland. He became known for his Nobel Prize winning invention of the Haber—Bosch process, a method used in industry to synthesize ammonia from nitrogen gas and hydrogen gas.
This invention is of importance for the large-scale synthesis of fertilisers. The food production for half the world’s current population depends on this method for producing nitrogen fertilisers.
His public life was entangled in controversy because of his role in the German poison gas programme during World War I. His name has been associated with the process of synthesizing ammonia. Haber formulated a theory to explain that exposure to a low concentration of a poisonous gas for a long time often had the same effect as exposure to a high concentration for a short time. This became known as Haber’s rule. He died on 29th January, 1934.