The Haber process (sometimes called the Haber- Bosch process)—invented by the German chemist Fritz Haber (1868-1934) in 1908—may be the most important technological advance of the twentieth century. At that time, the main way of obtaining large quantities of ammonia was from naturally occurring saltpeter. Ammonia was an incredibly useful substance, with uses ranging from cleaning to fertilizer and explosives. But saltpeter could be difficult to harvest, with deposits occurring on the walls of caves, and making it required the large-scale decomposition of piles of animal dung.
In the first decade of the twentieth century, increasing global agriculture was putting a large strain on the supplies of ammonia, and there were fears that the supply would not be able to keep up with the demand. What Haber created was a means of making ammonia that would make it a plentiful resource. He extracted hydrogen gas from methane and made it chemically react with nitrogen from the atmosphere. To do this he needed a catalyst—a substance that promotes certain chemical reactions. During his experiments he found that iron was the perfect catalyst and, by mixing the nitrogen and hydrogen under high pressure, in the presence of iron, he could make NHs (ammonia) in large quantities.
Just two years after Haber's breakthrough, German chemist Carl Bosch (1874-1940) was able to commercialize the process in 1910, while working for the chemical company BASF—and suddenly German industry had plentiful supplies of ammonia.
Fritz Haber won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1918 for his work. These days more than 500 million tons of artificial fertilizer are produced worldwide using the Haber process.
