Alchemy of Air

Alchemy of Air: A Jewish Genius, a Doomed Tycoon, and the Scientific Discovery That Fed the World but Fueled the Rise of Hitler by Thomas Hager, Crown, 2008. 

Potassium Nitrate: 

The Chinese combined potassium nitrate  with ground charcoal to invent gunpowder. The British East India Company found a huge supply of potassium nitrate in the mud flats of the river Ganges. 

Sodium Nitrate: 

A related chemical is sodium nitrate. Sodium nitrate is not as good for explosives as is potassium nitrate. But sodium nitrate is good for fertilizer. A large amount of sodium nitrate was found in the Atacama desert on the west coast of South America.  Bolivia and Chile fought a war over it, and as a consequence of losing this war, Bolivia lost the part of its territory that bordered the Pacific Ocean. 

Nitrogen Fixation: 

Converting atmospheric nitrogen (N2) to ammonia (NH3) is called nitrogen fixation. Some plant roots have symbiotic microorganisms that do this. This is how atmospheric nitrogen enters the biosphere. 

Fritz Haber: 

German chemist Fritz Haber developed a way to make ammonia (NH3) from nitrogen in the air (N2). He increased the percentage of nitrogen gas converted into ammonia by increasing the pressure inside the reaction vessel. He used osmium as a catalyst (a catalyst is a substance that speeds up the rate of a chemical reaction without being consumed in the process). 

Carl Bosch: 

Carl Bosch had a background in the steel industry. He knew metallurgy. He devised reaction vessels that would not explode under the tremendously high pressure needed for high yields of ammonia. The main problem he faced was that the gases in the reaction chamber chemically attacked and weakened the steel. By 1911 Haber and Bosch had developed a prototype that produced two tons of ammonia a day. Germany used the Haber-Bosch process to make both fertilizers and explosives. 

Nazis: 

Haber was an assimilated German Jew who converted to Christianity. But even though he had made huge contributions to the development of explosives for Germany in World War I, the Nazis persecuted him for being a Jew.