Half of the world’s population is alive because of two people whose names you’ve never heard and whose work won a Nobel prize, not in medicine but in chemistry. Let that sink in. These brilliant scientists, Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch, were tasked with a problem that nature had solved millions of years ago - turning an inert, unreactive nitrogen that is found in the air into an explosively reactive, biologically available nitrogen found in the soil of every fertile, plant-rich landscape on earth. The reaction they perfected and the product they created is one that farmers use every day, allows food crops to grow in the same place year after year, and is how 50% of the nitrogen within the body of every single human on the planet was made available. Haber and Bosch created fertilizer.
The story of the Haber-Bosch process is fascinating and I highly suggest reading The Alchemy of Air by Thomas Hager to have a complete picture of the challenges that these two scientists faced. Essentially, in the air, nitrogen is bound three times to itself and those bonds are really hard to break. It takes high heat, high pressure, and a very precise metal for humans to make this reaction occur and create ammonia. Ammonia's bonds are easily broken, which lets nitrogen be released. Biologically, plants and animals need nitrogen to survive as DNA is made up of billions of nitrogen atoms. Animals get their nitrogen by eating plants. Plants can’t eat and they also can’t break down the nitrogen in the air to get ammonium (since they don’t have high heat, high pressure, and the specific metal). So how is it that plants have enough nitrogen to grow, and enough to allow them to completely cover the earth?
Remember how I said that nature solved this problem millions of years ago? Certain bacteria have developed a way to break down this nitrogen into ammonia, in a process known as nitrogen fixation. This process takes a lot of energy from the bacteria and this can take a long time to fertilize acres and acres of soil. However, some plants have evolved with bacteria where the plants actually protect these bacteria and feed them nutrients. In return, the bacteria give the plants their extra nitrogen. Plants and bacteria evolved together for mutual gain. Because of this coevolution, plants don’t even always need to be in soil. Orchids, for example, grow where the branch attaches to the trunk because the bacteria in their roots, instead of the soil, feed them nitrogen.
This entire process, from the seemingly insurmountable problem that Haber and Bosch faced to the solution that has fed all of the world’s people, as well as the natural process that plants and bacteria have been perfecting for millions of years, fills me with wonder. It makes me curious about other processes that nature does better than us. And it makes me appreciate how even the most simple tasks, such as growing food and eating it, have been guided by scientists who most people have never even realized ever existed.
Jacob Lasky, North Carolina
M.S. Candidate in Analytics at the Institute for Advanced Analytics
The story of the Haber-Bosch process is fascinating and I highly suggest reading The Alchemy of Air by Thomas Hager to have a complete picture of the challenges that these two scientists faced. Essentially, in the air, nitrogen is bound three times to itself and those bonds are really hard to break. It takes high heat, high pressure, and a very precise metal for humans to make this reaction occur and create ammonia. Ammonia's bonds are easily broken, which lets nitrogen be released. Biologically, plants and animals need nitrogen to survive as DNA is made up of billions of nitrogen atoms. Animals get their nitrogen by eating plants. Plants can’t eat and they also can’t break down the nitrogen in the air to get ammonium (since they don’t have high heat, high pressure, and the specific metal). So how is it that plants have enough nitrogen to grow, and enough to allow them to completely cover the earth?
Remember how I said that nature solved this problem millions of years ago? Certain bacteria have developed a way to break down this nitrogen into ammonia, in a process known as nitrogen fixation. This process takes a lot of energy from the bacteria and this can take a long time to fertilize acres and acres of soil. However, some plants have evolved with bacteria where the plants actually protect these bacteria and feed them nutrients. In return, the bacteria give the plants their extra nitrogen. Plants and bacteria evolved together for mutual gain. Because of this coevolution, plants don’t even always need to be in soil. Orchids, for example, grow where the branch attaches to the trunk because the bacteria in their roots, instead of the soil, feed them nitrogen.
This entire process, from the seemingly insurmountable problem that Haber and Bosch faced to the solution that has fed all of the world’s people, as well as the natural process that plants and bacteria have been perfecting for millions of years, fills me with wonder. It makes me curious about other processes that nature does better than us. And it makes me appreciate how even the most simple tasks, such as growing food and eating it, have been guided by scientists who most people have never even realized ever existed.
Jacob Lasky, North Carolina
M.S. Candidate in Analytics at the Institute for Advanced Analytics