The Alchemy of Air

What Hacker News says

1. sbmthakurSep 2025
   Learned about that book from HN, so thanks HN. Of late, I've been reading The Alchemy of Air which revolves around Haber-Bosch process and it's been a delight so far. Highly recommend if you love a mix of non-fiction, history & science.
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2. adastra22Nov 2024
   "The Alchemy of Air" by Thomas Hager. This covers the discovery of fertilizer, its strategic implications (it was the oil of its day), the creation in Germany of the Haber-Bosch process for producing fertilizer and gunpowder precursors from air, and how it fueled two world wars. An incredible story that is not widely known these days.

   "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" by Richard Rhodes. This is an old one, but still a classic. The first half is like a scientific detective story about the discovery and development of quantum theory itself, in Germany and Denmark, and can be read by itself as an engaging history of physics. Then Hitler rises to power, we learn how most of the characters we've met so far escape to England and the USA, and the others except Bohr become part of the German nuclear project. It then becomes an engineering management history of the Manhattan project, and a fascinating look at the challenges they overcame. The final chapter is a sobering play by play description of what happened to the people of Hiroshima, and was hardest but necessary to read.

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3. photochemsynSep 2024
   One of the worst books on this ever written was the very popular "Collapse" by Jared Diamond, which entirely neglects the role European colonialism played in decimating the island's population in favor of a 'they did it to themselves' narrative (which apologists for colonialism naturally embraced). The more accurate historical narrative looks something like this:

   "In December 1862, Peruvian slave traders landed on Easter Island and captured approximately 1,500 Rapa Nui people, including much of the island's leadership and elite. The raids were brutal, and the kidnapped islanders were transported to the guano islands and plantations on the Peruvian coast. Of these 1,500 individuals, only a small fraction would ever return.Of the roughly 1,500 people taken, it is estimated that fewer than 100 survived to return home. By the mid-19th century, the island's population had been reduced to just a few hundred, down from an estimated 3,000–4,000 before the raids."

   The invention of ammonia synthesis from atmospheric N2 via the Haber-Bosch process largely put an end to the guano industy and the slave labor that supported it. There's an excellent book, "The Alchemy of Air" by Thomas Hager that covers this history well:

   https://blog.rootsofprogress.org/turning-air-into-bread

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4. eternauta3kOct 2023
   From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process#Process:

   > ammonia production is energy-intensive, accounting for 1% to 2% of global energy consumption, 3% of global carbon emissions,[23] and 3% to 5% of natural gas consumption

   Big if we can improve this.

   For more on the Haber process and its impact on the world, I highly recommend this book: "The 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.

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5. nvahalikAug 2022
   The book “The Alchemy of Air” is a fascinating read.
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6. posnetNov 2021
   If you are interested in the history of nitrogen fertilizer production, The Alchemy of Air [0] is excellent.

   The biggest revelation being that the same process that now fuels all modern agriculture was driven by demand for explosives in post WW1 Germany.

   [0] https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/73464/the-alchemy-o...

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