title: Master Mind: The Rise and Fall of Fritz Haber, the Nobel Laureate Who Launched the Age of Chemical Warfare
author:  Daniel Charles 
description: Fritz Haber (18681934), winner of the 1918 Nobel Prize for chemistry, was, in Charles's eyes, a "modern Faust": "willing to serve any master who could further his passion for knowledge and progress." Having discovered how to manufacture nitrogen-based fertilizer, which allowed the increase of crop production needed to feed an exploding human population, he also developed the first poison gas, used infamously in WWI at Ypres on April 22, 1915. It's this harrowing moral thicket that most fascinates Charles (<i>Lords of the Harvest</i>) in this overly sympathetic biography of the first "scientist-warrior." Haber was passionately committed to German nationalism (Jewish by birth, he converted to Christianity in order to assimilate), and he devoted his skills to Germany's cause in WWI. Approximately a week after Ypres Haber's wife, a scientist believed to have opposed the use of poison gas, committed suicide. Charles, a former NPR correspondent, strays from objectivity, frequently offering his own judgments and opinions, and he sees Haber's life as a cautionary tale: "[S]ometimes," he concludes, "it is the duty of an honest scientist" to refuse to put science in the service of national military goals."B&amp;w photos. <br />Copyright  Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
zlib_text: Editors
  
  Bretislav Friedrich , Dieter Hoffmann , Jürgen Renn , Florian Schmaltz and
  Martin Wolf
  
  One Hundred Years of Chemical Warfare: Research, Deployment, Consequences
  
  ![A393835_1_En_BookFrontmatter_Figa_HTML.gif](Image00000.gif)
  
  Editors
  
  Bretislav Friedrich
  
  Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society, Berlin, Germany
  
  Dieter Hoffmann
  
  Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, Germany
  
  Jürgen Renn
  
  Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, Germany
  
  Florian Schmaltz
  
  Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, Germany
  
  Martin Wolf
  
  Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society, Berlin, Germany
  
  ISBN 978-3-319-51663-9 e-ISBN 978-3-319-51664-6
  
  <https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51664-6>
  
  Library of Congress Control Number: 2017941064
  
  © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017
  
  [![Creative Commons](Image00001.jpg)
  ](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5)
  
  Open Access This book is distributed under the terms of th