Fritz Haber † [February 16, 1934]

Max von Laue

pp. 76-79

in: Klaus Hentschel (ed), Physics and national socialism, Basel, Birkhäuser, 1996

Abstract

On the 9th of December, 1928, Fritz Haber's sixtieth birthday, a small group of friends and co-workers came together in front of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry, his institute, and planted a linden tree in his honor, the Haber-Linde. He himself stayed in the South.^[2]This was the only [official] celebration of his birthday.^[3]Like other scientific journals, however, theNaturwissenschaftenpublished a jubilee issue composed of contributions by the most competent experts on Haber's spheres of activity.^[4] Whoever is interested in seeing what a loss Haber was, both in war and in peace, to chemistry and physics, agriculture and technology, should take it up. But the reader will also discover there that Haber's greatness is only due in part to his papers: He was maybe even greater as an institute director, in that he allowed his co-workers complete freedom to develop their talents, while still setting the general direction of the institute as a whole. At sixty his activity came by no means to an end. The topics and projects of his own recent investigations included the processes of combustion and explosions and the influence of atoms and chemical radicals on them, autoxidation and reduction in solutions also particularly in biological processes.^[5] Other projects from his institute that we will mention include Bonhoeffer's and Harteck's distinction between parahydrogen and orthohydrogen,^[6]as well as its application in the analysis of complicated chemical processes and magnetic properties. While it existed, his institute was renowned for its broad range of research in science.