Fritz Haber

Much of “Prussian Blue” centers on Fritz Haber, a Jewish chemist born in 1868. He helps to create the Haber-Bosch process, which allows factories to pull nitrogen directly out of the air for use as fertilizer. The process, in the early 20th century, leads to an enormous demographic explosion. Haber becomes known as “the man who pulled bread from the air” (29). In 1918, he wins the Nobel Prize for this contribution.

In When We Cease to Understand the World, Labatut also emphasizes Haber’s important role in the creation and dispersal of chemical weapons. Haber oversees the first gas attack in history, near Ypres, Belgium in 1915. On the battlefield at Ypres, “everything, even the insects were dead” (26). Haber’s wife, Clara, kills herself out of anger at Haber’s role in the attack. After World War I, Haber unsuccessfully attempts to replicate his scientific genius by “harvesting gold from...