Some inventors, like Edison, Ford, or Tesla, were able to succeed again and again with long strings of influential inventions we still use to this day. They were not one-trick ponies – they struck gold again and again. They all arguably had an extremely positive impact on society, and impact which continues to this day.

But what of scientists who had negative impacts? Or those with simply mixed records. There are similarly prodigious inventors who have left a more complicated legacy. They don’t often get the attention the other inventors have gotten, though their impact on society has been immense.

Fritz Haber

Few people have had an impact on modern life as great as Fritz Haber, though his enduring invention is largely taken for granted. His most notorious inventions aren’t soon to be forgotten.

Haber’s first notorious invention was initially used in Belgium during the First World War. On April 22, 1915, his invention, Chlorine Gas, was used to kill 5000 French and Algerian soldiers ((Feeding the Future by Andrew Heintzman and Evan Soloman, Page 1 )) . This invention would be the start of widespread use of gas to kill during the war, though tear-gas had been used to disable soldiers before Chlorine was used in a more damaging way.

Haber’s wife, Clara, a chemist herself, found her husband’s invention so objectionable she shot herself through the heart, killing herself instantly.

Later in life, Haber developed an extremely powerful pesticide called Zyklon B, which would be used in the Nazi gas chambers of the Second World War. Haber, himself a Jew, was forced to flee the Nazis, and died as a refugee in Switzerland.

Haber’s greatest impact was his invention of artificial fertilizer. More than just about any invention, artificial fertilizer is a tool that has fundamentally changed society as a whole. Artificial Nitrogen fertilizers have helped sustain immense populations (( For more information on Haber’s impact on world population, visit here )), and without them some argue that our society could not have gotten as large as it has.

Artificial fertilizer has also lead to many farming practices which are arguably unsustainable and damaging to the environment. Unchecked use of artificial fertilizers has lead to depleted topsoil, which in turn causes increased dependence on the fertilizers (( World Changing, Page 55-56 )) . Creation of these fertilizers is also highly dependent on fossil fuels, especially Natural Gas. While Natural Gas is abundant, its price is tied to that of oil, and as oil gets ever more expensive so will our fertilizer. (( This graph, from the U.S. Government, shows the link between the prices of oil and natural gas. It appeared in this report ))

On top of this, fertilizer production creates huge amounts of Nitrous Oxide, a greenhouse gas roughly 296 times more potent than Carbon Dioxide by weight. It’s easy to forget that farming is one of our most polluting industries, and is responsible for a large portion of our greenhouse gas emissions.

On the whole, it’s hard to dismiss Haber’s positive impact, though with any invention with as much impact as his invention of artificial fertilizer, there are serious negatives.

Tags: Long Term Thinking