Who really discovered the Haber process?
Although Fritz Haber's name is now attached to the process for the synthesis of ammonia from its constituent elements by using high pressure, who was responsible for this reaction?
Ammonia was first synthesised in appreciable yield from its constituent elements by using high pressure and moderate temperatures 100 years ago. The person responsible for this reaction was German chemist Walther Nernst, not Fritz Haber whose name is now attached to the process. This is the story.
Ammonia was first produced from its elements in 1807 by Humphry Davy. He electrolysed distilled water in the presence of air and detected small amounts of ammonia. The water was contained in gold cups connected by a strip of water-moistened, purified asbestos rope. The same experiment, done in a vacuum, produced only oxygen and hydrogen. Over the next century various workers challenged this result, curiously not by replicating Davy's exact conditions (using gold electrodes and a low current density) but using, typically, platinum electrodes and a high current density. In 1922 Friedrich Fichter and Richard Suter synthesised ammonia at a rate of 0.3 mg/minute by using a current of 100 A and a pressure of 200 atm. Clearly methods based on electrolysis were not going to be economical, despite some optimistic patents arising from this research.
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