Master Mind: The Rise And Fall Of Fritz Haber, The Nobel Laureate Who Launched The Age Of Chemical Warfare Hardcover – Deckle Edge, 1 August 2005

How does one live with one's self when they help invent chemical warfare for the destruction of mankind for the sake of winning for Germany in World War 1?This story brings out the story of a proud German first who happened to be Jewish and then converted his religion.He saw destruction from his invention..Read on this interesting and devastating story and see for yourself the man behind a new wave to destroy mankind.Interesting piece of history.

Das Leben von Haber ist tief verwoben mit der bitteren Geschichte Deutschlands vor und nach dem ersten Weltkrieg. Das Buch hat mich dem viel näher gebracht als mein Geschichtsunterricht es je zu Stande brachte.

I must admit I did not know much about Fritz Haber, and what I thought I knew was mostly wrong. I had always incorrectly associated Haber with the terrible uses made of Zyklon B, and although he invented the stuff, his goal was to protect food supplies from insect damage. He himself was of Jewish origin, and was deceased in 1934, long before the Nazi's used the insecticide in the holocaust.=== The Good Stuff ===* Daniel Charles does a nice job of capturing the conflicted mind of Haber, both as a scientist and as a Jewish citizen of an increasingly anti-semitic Germany. He had converted to the Lutheran religion, he was still considered "Jewish" under the laws of Germany, and his academic career suffered.* Haber's most infamous discovery was the use of poison gasses (chlorine, mustard) as a weapon during World War I. Charles relates Haber's justifications of the use of these agents quite well, and they reflect the later justifications used with atomic weapons thirty years later. For better or worse, Haber saw little difference between asphyxiating soldiers with poison gas or blowing them into pieces with high explosives. It is an interesting viewpoint, and well related in the book.* The book is easily readable, and it held my interest throughout. It covers Haber's whole life, and does not shy away from the more controversial or darker side to Haber's personality or discoveries.=== The Not-So-Good Stuff ===* The book gets a bit carried away with detail. Some of the narrative gets overly carried away with areas of Haber's life with are not especially interesting and do not really contribute to an understanding of the man. While these did not make up a majority of the book, there was enough of them to somewhat diminish my enjoyment of the book.* I would have liked to see other areas more expanded. I recall from other readings that Haber's work with poison gasses made him somewhat of an outcast among scientists, especially men like Einstein. While this is touched upon in the book, it could have been expanded and explained a bit more.=== Summary ===Overall I liked the book, and learned a lot from it. I had a brief knowledge of Haber's life and work, but much of that was incorrect or incomplete. The narrative could have been a bit more complete in some areas, and more selective in others, but overall it was a credible work. I would recommend it to anyone interested in the history of science, or the intersection of technology, morality and politics.

It is often said the four people who had the most effect on the twentieth century were Einstein, Marx, Freud, and Darwin. Fritz Haber has to be close to number five. Mankind's food production, yield per acre, has always been limited to the amount of nitrogen that becomes "fixed" into the soil as nitrates. Historically crops were rotated; fields were alternately planted with nitrogen fixing plants to improve yields. In 1909, Fritz Haber's invention showed that man could fix nitrogen, and when teamed up with Carl Bosch, the process could yield ammonia on an industrial scale. Large quantities of nitrogen fertlizer and gunpowder was the result. Thus German manufacture of gunpowder extended Germany's resistance in World War I for years because of this crucial process.The Author shows the sad irony of war, ideology, and hate. Fritz Haber, a German Jew converted to Christianity to better blend in with the higher echelons of German industrialists as he became very wealthy. He Invented various gases used in gas attacks and one insecticide gas called Zyklon-B, which would be used in the death camps for the extermination of in-mates years later.A fun loving gregarious Nobel Prize winning industrialist that was a failure as a father and husband, also misread the significance of the Nazis coming to power in Germany. He could not comprehend being robbed on his possessions, business agreements, and professional positions and finally fleeing to Switzerland where he died a broken man in 1934. The book is well written and researched. The last few chapters after Haber's death are a nice touch to the book, It traces Fritz Haber's family after the war and some of the Haber-Bosch machinery used in World War I then again in WWII and finally to help the East German Government make ends meet as late as the 1980's.

Fritz Haber was a very busy man, who like many scientists had a very sad personal life. He seemingly had limited interpersonal skills which negatively affected not just professional relationships but those between family and spouse. Whilst his research in organic chemistry was initially cutting-edge, his lack of a personal ethical compass led him to have not one sleepless night after his development of poison gas and its use as a chemical weapon in the First World War. This new chapter of chemical warfare that his invention championed will for me forever stain his memory and detract from his Nobel Prize.Daniel Charles has written a fact filled book but does not seem to have written a biography in which one can easily connect with Haber. Whether this is a result of the language he has used or the lack of empathy for the subject is hard to tell. Having finished the book I felt I knew a lot about the science, but little about the 'real' Haber and how he was hard wired.