Most Bizarre Scientific Stories in history

[LP]

Re: Most Bizarre Scientific Stories in history

This one isn’t bizarre .
Chemists are developing such chemicals all over the world.

@devilish_angel

Haber’s Rule

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Most know Fritz Haber for his Nobel Prize-winning development of synthesized ammonia for fertilizers and explosives, but few know about his evil work for Germany during World War I. Many scientists of the day saw World War I as not only a war between countries, but between the chemists that represented them when it came to developing new and deadly techniques for chemical warfare. Also known as the “father of chemical warfare,” Haber played a major role in developing chemical weapons. Haber was able to develop uses for deadly chlorine gas that, because of its density, would settle in the enemies’ trenches, choking and burning them to death. He also discovered that long exposure to low concentrations of deadly gases had the same effects as short periods with high exposure. He was able to calculate the relationship between exposure and time, calling the equation “The Haber Rule.”

Haber was proud to serve for Germany and was even promoted to captain by the Kaiser for his work in chemical warfare. Haber believed gas warfare was humane, claiming that death is death regardless of the means by which it was caused. But his wife, Clara Immerwahr (the first female chemist to ever achieve a PhD at the University of Breslau), strongly opposed his involvement in gas warfare. She eventually committed suicide after witnessing the horrid effects the chlorine gas had at the Battle of Ypres.

As World War II began, the Nazis approached Haber, a Jew, offering him funding to continue his chemical weaponry research. Haber declined and fled to Cambridge, England with his assistant. While he was there, it was said that Ernest Rutherford refused to shake Haber’s hand for what he had done in the field of chemical warfare. During the 1920s, researchers at Haber’s institutes continued developing several forms of deadly chemical warfare including the cyanide formula Zyklon A, which was later developed into Zyklon B for gas chambers at Nazi concentration camps.