The Great and The Good
The great and the good are not always the same people. Although it has long been accepted that some of history’s most significant figures have done horrifying things, especially when viewed through a modern lens, of late, this has come into sharp focus. Now more than ever, people are considering how we should act when we discover that some people who achieved great things, cannot be considered good.
Should we honour the achievements of terrible people? Should we accept that the brightest lights often cast the darkest shadows? Or should we only revere those whose lives stand up to intricate scrutiny, retrospectively cancelling any who fail our modern examinations? Should we extinguish the memory, or even the works, of those we deem to have committed unforgivable sin.
It’s certainly a dilemma. I sometimes wonder if the existence of his collaboration with Blue invalidates much of Stevie Wonder’s earlier work.
A large section of my new book (out in January, available to pre-order now) is devoted to the life and work of Fritz Haber, a German chemist who probably had more influence upon the world than anyone, before or since. Although the extraordinary significance of his research is rarely appreciated or considered, your ability to read these words leans heavily on a breakthrough made in his laboratory on a July afternoon in 1909. The technique he perfected, following several years of painstaking research, would become known as the Haber process, and was a way of fixing nitrogen from the air. If that sounds insignificant and dull, it really isn’t. It is doubtful that any scientific advance in history affects us more.
By the turn of the twentieth century, it had become clear that the amount of bioavailable nitrogen would be the main factor placing an upper limit on human population growth. Without some way of overcoming this, the world was heading for starvation on a scale beyond biblical. Although there is plenty of nitrogen in the atmosphere, it is an inert gas that humans cannot use directly. We need nitrogen to be converted into forms that we can incorporate into our bodies, where it is an essential component of every cell and structure. The trouble is, fixing atmospheric nitrogen is extremely difficult, energy expensive and is only performed by a limited number of special bacteria. As a result, the amount of bioavailable nitrogen places an upper limit on most biological systems, including the human population.
It has been calculated that without a method of fixing nitrogen from the air, the planet we live on could only support around 3-4 billion people, a population line that was crossed in the late 1960s. If Haber hadn’t developed his process 60 years earlier, and his colleague Bosch had not been able to convert it into large scale industrial production, the twentieth century would have seen vastly more famine, war and environmental destruction. Although nitrogen fixing sounds banal and inconsequential, without it, the world that we know, with all its technology, affluence and progress, would never have been possible.
Without Haber and Bosch, civilisation would have collapsed, probably before the middle of the twentieth century, with mass hunger returning us to the dark ages. Half as many people would be alive today, and the population would be permanently held under a cloak of extreme starvation. Any of the progress in science, medicine, technology and society that has been achieved since Haber’s time, would not have been possible.
Forget antibiotics, vaccines, evidence based medicine, information technology, sanitation, welfare systems and universal healthcare. The twentieth century breakthrough that saved the most lives and relieved the most suffering was the ammonia synthesis first performed in Haber’s lab, something that still underpins around half of all food production. It is an innovation so successful that most of us have no concept of the horrors we would have to face if it did not exist.
Many of the scientific and engineering advances of Haber’s time have long since been replaced by new technologies, but a near exact replica of the Haber-Bosch process is still responsible for most of the nitrogen fixed today. This makes Haber’s breakthrough both uniquely significant and astonishingly enduring. Although there is an argument that if he hadn’t existed, someone else would have done the work, Haber’s research at the time was unique in its direction. He received a great deal of scorn from others in the field, claiming that the method of synthesis he was attempting was impossible.
Although many will know his name, considering the profound impact of his work, Haber is barely remembered. He was awarded a Nobel prize in 1919, but received little acclaim or adoration, even in his time. Legends such as Curie, Watson, Crick, Rutherford, Pasteur and Nobel have their names burnt into the public consciousness, associated with institutes, universities, hospitals, charities and prizes. All did significant work, but how many could say that they saved 4 billion humans from starvation, or fundamentally underpinned the last hundred years of human progress. Watson and Crick may have deduced the structure of DNA (admittedly with a fair bit of uncredited help), but at least 50% of DNA inside your cells contains nitrogen that was produced using Haber’s technique.
In Germany, although the Haber-Bosch process was crucial in the war effort, breaking the country’s dependence on imported nitrogen-rich mineral deposits, by the 1930s, Haber’s Jewish ancestry led to him being ostracised and eventually exiled. Across the rest of the world, his wartime work pioneering the use of chemical weapons led most of the scientific community to disown him. His Nobel prize award was widely contested on these grounds, and Ernest Rutherford refused to shake his hand at the ceremony.
Unsurprisingly, there was never talk of abandoning the global benefits of ammonia synthesis, as allowing billions to starve would have been a bridge too far. But it was widely felt that the weapons Haber pioneered and championed, including the infamous mustard gas, made conflict even more horrific. Although he changed the world and alleviated more human suffering than anyone in history, Fritz Haber died in exile, alone and miserable, the victim of an early incarnation of cancel culture.
It is probably correct that Haber was largely cancelled in his time. Mustard gas cost over a million lives, and he failed to show the slightest contrition, claiming that his innovation should be praised for helping to end the brutal deadlock of the trenches. He definitely achieved great things, but it is very hard to see him as a good man. So should his name be removed from the process he developed? Should he been taken off the roster of Nobel prize winners? Are we comfortable with a difficult, complicated and deeply flawed individual being remembered at all?
I suspect that our current balance is about right. There are certainly aspects of Haber’s life that are troubling, but his quest to fix nitrogen was largely motivated by a desire to alleviate suffering (although to be fair, industrially produced ammonia was also important in the manufacture of explosives). Even his later work is perhaps understandable in context. Both sides eventually used gas warfare, and Haber’s institute was set up as a response to the work of allied scientists, who had already developed chemical weapons of their own, albeit less effectively. And war was already vile, long before the chemists got involved. Although being gassed is no doubt a horrible way to die, so is being blown to pieces by artillery, or dying from an infected wound in the dirty, deadlocked trenches. And so of course is starvation, a fate that billions would have suffered without Haber.
It is also more than a little ironic that so many scientists objected to the award of a Nobel prize because of Haber’s work on weapons development, given that Nobel’s fortune came from his pioneering research on explosives, innovations that have taken many more lives over the years. When it comes to Haber, it is surely right that we recognise his brilliance, appreciate his importance, understand the context of his life and feel sad that an obviously brilliant man could have achieved even more if the world had been different. There is not a statue of him in every town, but students of chemistry learn his name, and obscure food science writers occasionally mention him in their books and blog posts. The greatness of his achievements can be recognised in this way, without an obsessive need for the man to be pure.
But there is an extraordinary part of Haber’s story that is rarely told, and one that is even missing from my new book, largely because of limitations on word count.
Never a problem on this blog. That introduction was about 1500 words.
It is a tale that says a lot about what it is to be cancelled and forgotten, and starts in a small town near Breslau on the 21st June 1870, when Clara Immerwahr was born into an affluent Jewish family. Her father was a scientist whose dreams of owning a chemical factory had never come to fruition, yet had managed to forge a successful career as a merchant. As Clara’s passion for natural sciences flourished, her father strongly encouraged her to pursue it, despite this being unusual, challenging and controversial in late 19th century Prussia.
Clara seems to have been a woman ahead of her time. She was angry at the lack of opportunities open to her in a country that did not even allow women to enter secondary education. Across more enlightened parts of Europe, small numbers of women were slowly being given opportunities to become educated and employed at universities, but the Germany of the time was a long way behind the curve, and women were largely expected to comply to their ‘natural purpose’ of bearing children and keeping a home. The fact that the Immerwahrs were Jewish provided even more obstacles, as antisemitism at the time was rife.
Clara’s father paid for her to have private tutors, and she exploited a loophole that allowed her to attend science lectures at Breslau University as a guest auditor. Eventually, she managed to pass an examination that gave her the equivalent of a secondary education, meaning that she could attend the University as a student.
She was fortunate to fall under the tutelage of a prominent chemist called Richard Abegg, who recognised her potential and became her doctoral advisor. Abegg had little time for the prevailing feeling that a woman studying science was against the natural order, and Immerwahr flourished academically under him. She was eventually awarded a PhD in 1900, the first woman to receive one from Breslau University, and the first German woman to attain a doctorate in chemistry. Over a short period, she published a small number of papers in leading journals, mostly on the electro-affinity and solubility of different ions.
Shortly after receiving her doctorate, she ran into an old flame at a conference, where she was the only woman in attendance. His name was Fritz Haber, then a rising star of the German chemistry scene. He too had grown up in the Jewish community of Breslau and they had become close whilst attending dance classes together. Haber had suggested marriage at the time, but Immerwahr declined as she was keen to ensure she was financially independent before committing herself.
When Haber left Breslau to study, he had attempted, unsuccessfully, to forget about Immerwahr. She was unique, forthright and brilliant, and he was utterly captivated. It must have been astonishing to find that the young woman he had known back then, however intelligent and knowledgeable she had been, was now Germany’s first female doctor of physical chemistry, published in respected journals. They quickly rekindled their relationship and were married shortly after.
Although she did not realise it at the time, marriage would mark the end of Immerwahr’s scientific career. They had a son, Hermann, born in 1902, but the pregnancy was difficult and Hermann had a number of health problems, requiring a great deal of her attention. Coupled with that, Haber’s career was starting to soar, leading to a huge increase in her household responsibilities, entertaining guests and supporting her husband. It seems that Clara was unprepared for this change, and struggled as her plans of resuming the career she had fought so hard for faltered. She had longed for the sort of collaborative scientific partnership of Pierre and Marie Curie, but this was just not possible in the Germany of the time. As Haber rose to fame, Immerwahr’s intellectual pursuits were reduced to translating his papers into English and helping with administration.
Or maybe they weren’t. There is evidence that Immerwahr provided intellectual support for Haber, at least in the early stages of marriage. His 1905 text book has a dedication to her, thanking her for ‘quiet collaboration’. It seems likely that Haber would have leaned on her intellect and knowledge as he dedicated his life to cracking the problem of ammonia synthesis. She had studied under one of the world’s leading chemists, was an expert on ionic transfer, and had overcome enormous barriers to enter academia. Like so many female scientists, she must have had an ability well beyond that of her peers in order to be considered an equal.
That said, there is no definitive evidence that Immerwahr actively contributed to Haber’s greatest breakthrough. But whether she did or not, it must have been frustrating to see him rise to greatness, despite the riches and status it brought their family. Surviving letters to her old mentor show a growing unhappiness within the marriage, and a difficulty in coping with the responsibilities of running their home. When she did manage to lecture, although this was mostly restricted to talks for women’s groups about the chemistry of the home, most people wrongly assumed her husband had written the content. By the time war approached and Fritz Haber was working on chemical weapons, Clara was already struggling with married life, and deeply frustrated by everything she had given up.
Much of the legend of Clara Immerwahr rests on a belief that she was a committed pacifist in ardent opposition to her husband’s work on chemical weapons, although there is little hard evidence to support this. It does however seem likely that Haber’s wartime work had at least some influence on the awful events that unfolded in May 1915, a few days after the first deployment of chlorine gas at Ypres had ‘successfully’ claimed five thousand lives.
Haber, who had been away supervising these attacks, returned to Berlin to attend a party in his honour, celebrating his promotion to Captain. Accounts vary, and Haber never spoke of what unfolded, but the couple argued and Clara shot herself through the heart, dying in the arms of her thirteen year old son. The very next day, Haber left Hermann alone to deal with the situation, returning to the front to supervise another gas deployment.
It may be that Clara shot herself in protest at her husband’s involvement in chemical weapons, but it is far more likely that her suicide was the result of a complex set of circumstances. Her mentor Abegg had died shortly before in a tragic accident, and a close friend had also been killed by an explosion in her husband’s laboratory, an event she had witnessed. She was profoundly unhappy, stuck in a difficult marriage, and had lost the career she had fought so hard for. Given the timing of her death, it seems unlikely that her husband’s work did not play apart, perhaps along with the general horror of living through a global conflict. The only certain thing is that, as with the vast majority of suicides, we will never know the whole truth.
What we do know is that Clara Immerwahr was a remarkable person, almost certainly as brilliant as her husband. She shone brightly in her early years, achieving astonishing things, but was largely silenced in her time. This cancelling was not because anyone disapproved of her actions. She was cancelled because that is what society dictated must happen to a Jewish woman. Anything else was considered an upset to the natural order. Her achievements were still immense, paving the way for countless female scientists to come, but if she had been born in a different time and place, there is little doubt that they would have been even greater. Perhaps her name would be mentioned in the same breath as Curie, Lovelace and Franklin.
There have been a number of attempts to depict Clara Immerwahr as a passionate campaigner for peace who deplored chemical weapons and died in a dramatic protest. It is also a popular telling of the story to cast Fritz Haber as a monster who ground her down, destroying her career to further his own. Both things may well be true, although the supporting evidence for them is thin on the ground.
Personally, I like to believe in a more complex picture, but one that does not lessen the significance of Immerwahr’s life and achievements. If Haber had wanted a subservient wife to produce children and manage a household, it seems unlikely he would have married Germany’s leading female chemist. If he had grown to despise her, his desire to be buried alongside her expressed in his will is unusual, especially considering he married again after the war. And although prioritising his career over hers seems brutal, they both must have know that his work on ammonia synthesis was exceptionally important, ultimately changing the world. Perhaps the hardest thing to reconcile is Haber’s decision to leave the morning after his wife’s death, which does seem extraordinarily callous, but perhaps the personal consequences of him abandoning the war effort would have been severe, even deadly.
Instead of picturing Clara as a martyr to the cause of peace, I prefer to imagine something far more hopeful, and perhaps more likely. I like to think that this brilliant female chemist, with world leading expertise in electrochemistry, selflessly gave insight and support to Fritz Haber as he worked on ammonia synthesis, pushing him closer to cracking humankind’s most pressing problem. In a more progressive society, the Habers would surely have worked together, solving that and many other problems with their uniquely brilliant minds. Maybe Fritz Haber had dreamed of this sort of partnership when they first married, even if it later became impossible. With the world as it was, particularly within the country they lived, Clara Immerwahr did what she could, fought the battles she could win, and in doing so helped change the world. I hope that she realised her value before she died, instead of just knowing despair.
It troubles me that Fritz Haber’s most important work is tarnished, but in truth, he was not the biggest victim of cancel culture, even within his own family. He was a powerful man who made some bad decisions. Clara was equally brilliant, made few mistakes, but never gained recognition. Like Rosalind Franklin years later, she was cancelled before she had the chance to be heard.
The worst of cancel culture is not the silencing of those who are powerful. It is keeping those without power held down. It is ensuring that marginalised voices are never heard and their stories never told. Clara Immerwahr was a remarkable woman who fought hard for a voice, yet even she ended up silenced and frustrated. She is perhaps only remembered at all because of her association with Haber and her violent, untimely death.
When we lament the silencing of those who were once loud, we should try and remember that many of the most brilliant people never get to have a voice. We should also recognised the debt we owe to the slow, incremental warriors like Immerwahr, who saw in their time how wrong this was, and fought to make the world a fairer place.
