Fritz Haber reviews

We'd like to comment on the trilogy of reviews about the life and work of the German chemist and Nobelist Fritz Haber (C&EN, Feb. 6, page 29). Daniel Charles' book review faults the author for failing to provide sufficient detail concerning Haber's development of the process for oxidizing ammonia to nitric acid, but as recounted in Thomas Chilton's 1968 book "Strong Water" (MIT Press), this process is usually attributed to the German chemist Wilhelm Ostwald and not to Haber. Though it is true that war shortages made it necessary to find a cheaper replacement for the platinum catalyst employed by Ostwald, this tweaking process was done largely at BASF and not at Haber's institute.

A more serious point is that all three items under review appear to either misrepresent or sensationalize certain aspects of Haber's life, whether this involves misrepresenting his religious views (let alone those of Albert Einstein) or indulging in highly dubious causal chains in an attempt to link him with the death camps of Nazi Germany. To counterbalance this "artistic" exaggeration, we would like to call readers' attention to a far more balanced account of Haber's life by Dietrich Stoltzenberg, "Fritz Haber: Chemist, Nobel Laureate, German, Jew," which was published in 2004 by the Chemical Heritage Foundation in Philadelphia.

Milton Orchin
William B. Jensen
Cincinnati