A scientist named Fritz Haber was very dedicated to his work.
A video on Fritz Haber
The excitement from his experiments built up inside him. This caused him to become sleep deprived and have anger issues. He would have to take weeks off just so he could relax for a little. At the meeting in 1907 for the Bunsen Society for Applied Physical Chemistry he stood in front of his peers to talk and they publicly insulted him. The one who started it was a very famous german researcher named Walther Nernst.
Nernst did his research at the famed University of Berlin while Haber did his at a little unknown university in South Germany. Nernst came up with the third law of thermodynamics while Haber’s research didn’t amount to really anything. Nernst worked with Wilhelm Ostwald a very famous scientist that Haber tried to get a job with twice, but got turned down at the time because supposedly for certain reasons, but really because he was a Jew. Their feud started when Nernst calculated the energy from the creation of ammonia from air to be a certain number while Haber’s lab calculated different numbers. Haber had trouble doing this experiment for the Austrians because he couldn’t get the dinitrogen to come apart because they had such strong bonding. His trouble continued when he figured out how to tear them apart. He found out that really high heats could tear them apart, but the heat was so high it would destroy the ammonia. Haber did finally get the nitrogen gas to split, but never was able to save any ammonia. He reported this in a paper in 1905. Nernst decided to read Haber’s paper. He saw that the amount of ammonia he got was wrong. He decided to get his assistants to do the lab and found that he (Nernst) was right. He was going to show his correct data at the Bunsen Meeting. Haber was fuming that Nernst was going to embarrass him like that. Nernst did that exact same experiment as Haber did except he used a air compressor, but even when Haber did that exact same experiment as Nernst the data has still off by a lot. Haber kept getting much more ammonia than Nernst.
At the Bunsen Meeting they both showed what they got. Nernst insulted Haber and his findings the entire time so when Haber went back to his school he was really mad and worked even harder to prove his research. Especially since Haber is already judged by his father that never was proud of him. He never got to see what his mother thought of him because she died a week after his birth. Also as a Jew in Germany in the 1900’s many doors were closed to him and as Walter Rathenau said Jews at the time no matter what freedoms they got always felt like second class citizens. As a student he always wanted to be liked by the other kids, but many disliked him because he was a Jew. This didn’t effect Haber’s studies though because he was a very intrigued student. He wanted to be a chemist, but did work a few other jobs like in the military and for his father. When he became a chemist he didn’t know what he wanted to specialize in so he tried them all. He did get a doctorate in the dye industry. He worked many jobs in different places, but he continued his research, but was all over the place so he didn’t achieve anything big. He then converted to christianity to make his life easier. He didn’t really care that much about religion he just wanted to get an obstacle out of the way. After some hard work he started to achieve some things. He was offered a job at the University of Karlsruhe. Him and his colleagues weren’t well known, but they were at least respected. He made many friends at the university and loved it there even though it was a little small for his ambition. In 1906 he finally became a university professor which was very prestigious. After this he married a chemist and had a son with her. His marriage wasn’t great because he never had time for his family because all he did was work. He worked even more since the Nernst insult.
It's a shame to hear that Haber's work did not go very far since he clearly devoted much time and sacrificed a social life for it. It is horrible that such great minds as his were constricted from contributing to science due to religion. If given the information he lacked, it seems his work could have gone far. Despite horrible treatment, it is inspiring he did not allow himself to be discouraged.
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