127
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 06 Mar 2024
127 points (97.0% liked)
Asklemmy
44157 readers
1573 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
Fritz Haber, the Veritasium video about him is fascinating (The Man who Killed Milioms and Saved Bilions). He developed the chemical process to efficiently synthesize ammonia, one of the key discoveries that allowed mass adoption of fertilizers and the incredibly rapid growth of the human population in the 20th century (you could say that thanks to him, bilions of people could live and be fed by modern agriculture).
Tragically, he also had a fundamental role in developing chemical weapons during WWI, although he belived their use would reduce the number of deaths as army would simply avoid gassed zones, so who knows if he really intended and believed in the milions of deaths he caused. Ironically, he also helped developing Zyklon B during the rise of nazism (while it was still used as a pesticide), but was quickly forced to flee from Germany because of jewish origin. Later, his last invention would be used to kill even more people.
There's also a Sabaton song, "Father", about him.
That's where I first heard about him. Thanks, Spotify. I've learned more about European history from Sabaton and Iron Maiden than I have from school.
Someone else mention Borlaug in this thread, and it shows how no single person necessarily changed anything on their own, and how it's difficult to put all the success as the result of a single person. Borlaug's success was only possible by building on Haber's work, just like Haber worked with Carl Bosch to accomplish what he did, and so on.
Seven Billion Humans: The World Fritz Haber Made