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January 18 - January 22, 2025
The Haber–Bosch process is the most important chemical discovery of the twentieth century. By doubling the amount of disposable nitrogen, it provoked the demographic explosion that took the human population from 1.6 to 7 billion in fewer than one hundred years. Today, nearly fifty per cent of the nitrogen atoms in our bodies are artificially created, and more than half the world population depends on foodstuffs fertilized thanks to Haber’s invention.
Like the moon in Buddhism, a particle does not exist: it is the act of measuring that makes it a real object.
Schrödinger’s cat, like any elementary particle, was alive and dead (at least until it was measured), and the Austrian’s name would remain associated forever with this failed attempt to negate the ideas he himself had helped give rise to.
