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Carl Bosch
(27 Aug 1874 - 26 Apr 1940)
German industrial chemist who developed the Haber-Bosch process for high-pressure synthesis of ammonia.
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Science Quotes by Carl Bosch (1 quote)
The disaster was caused neither by carelessness nor human failure. Unknown natural factors that we are still unable to explain today have made a mockery of all our efforts. The very substance intended to provide food and life to millions of our countrymen and which we have produced and supplied for years has suddenly become a cruel enemy for reasons we are as yet unable to fathom. It has reduced our site to rubble.
From the memorial service for the hundreds of people killed by the explosion of the ammonia fertilizer factory at Oppau, Germany. At the time, the explosive nature of ammonium nitrate was not understood.
From the memorial service for the hundreds of people killed by the explosion of the ammonia fertilizer factory at Oppau, Germany. At the time, the explosive nature of ammonium nitrate was not understood.
— Carl Bosch
BASF corporate history webpage.
Quotes by others about Carl Bosch (1)
Then we'll work a hundred years without physics and chemistry.
[Response shouted back to Carl Bosch (then still head of IG Farben), who had tried to advise him that if Jewish scientists were forced to leave the country both physics and chemistry would be set back 100 years.]
[Response shouted back to Carl Bosch (then still head of IG Farben), who had tried to advise him that if Jewish scientists were forced to leave the country both physics and chemistry would be set back 100 years.]
At first meeting between Bosch and Hitler (Mar 1933). As quoted in Joseph Borkin, (1978), 57. Pat Choate in Hot Property: The Stealing of Ideas in an Age of Globalization (2005), states the result that “A month after that meeting, the ninety-day-old Nazi-led government adopted a law that forbade anyone of ‘non-Aryan descent’ from working in the German civil service, including state-run universities. ... Within a year, almost 20 percent of Germany's mathematicians and physicists were dismissed from university positions.”
See also:
- 27 Aug - short biography, births, deaths and events on date of Bosch's birth.
- Oppau fertilizer factory explosion - description and other events on 21 Sep 1921.
- Enriching the Earth: Fritz Haber, Carl Bosch, and ... World Food Production, by Vaclav Smil. - book suggestion.
- Booklist for Carl Bosch.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
