Carl Bosch Facts
Carl Bosch Facts
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| Interesting Carl Bosch Facts: |
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| Bosch was born in Cologne into a family with close ties to the industrial, chemical, engineering, and plumbing industries; his uncle is the inventor of the spark plug. |
| Bosch earned a doctorate in organic chemistry from the University of Leipzig in 1898. |
| After graduation, he went to work for well-known chemical company BASF, where he found practical industrial applications for Fritz Haber's method of fixing nitrogen. |
| Bosch's work on Haber's model made it possible to produce countless tons of nitrogen-based fertilizer and explosives, and is now known as the Haber-Bosch Process. |
| This process generates nitrogen out of air by fixing it under intense pressure. |
| In order to make this process economically feasible and industrially useful, Bosch had to develop an entire chemical plant and its necessary equipment dedicated to functioning under intense pressures and temperatures. |
| While his initial work led to the large-scale production of ammonia and its resulting revolutionizing of the world's agricultural industry, he later began work on taking this same process and altering it to produce methanol and synthetic fuels. |
| He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1931 for his contributions to high-pressure chemistry. |
| Due to Bosch's political views and his outspoken criticism of the Nazi Party's ideals, he was relieved of all public work, including as head of IG Farben, when Hitler came to power. |
| The Haber-Bosch process is still in use and is responsible for the production of more than 100 million tons of nitrogen fertilizer annually. |
| This method is responsible for producing one-third of the entire world's food supply every year. |
| The Haber-Bosch process is an important part of the green energy movement that is currently impacting the work of the scientific community as researchers look for solutions to our current and projected future energy needs. |
| Bosch also happened to have a hobby-level interest in astronomy, and collected meteorites. |
| His samples were loaned to Yale University, but upon his death they were sold to the Smithsonian. |
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