Fritz Haber's story is the story of the double edged sword of science. He
won the Nobel prize in 1918 for his groundbreaking work in
breaking the nitrogen cycle for Germany's WWI efforts, but it's been estimated that two out of every five people now living would not have been born if it
weren't for artificial fertilizers created using his process. He also spent much of the war developing poison gases; first chlorine (after watching its first use, Haber's wife committed suicide) and later Zyklon B (the cyanide insecticide later used against his fellow Jews in concentration camps). He died alone and in poverty in Switzerland. But the lessons of his life haven't
quite been forgotten.
posted by Plutor
on Nov 21, 2006 -
17 comments
The Suicide’s Soliloquy August 25, 1838, the Sangamo Journal, a Whig newspaper in Springfield, Illinois, carried an unsigned poem, thirty-six lines long. It stands out for two reasons: first, its subject is suicide; second, its author was most likely a twenty-nine-year-old politician and lawyer named
Abraham Lincoln.
Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin relates how
historians regard a broken off engagement to Mary Todd as the trigger to
his famous depression, but it was his perceived failure as politician, she maintains, that fed Lincoln's
"black dog". (For his depression,
Lincoln probably took "blue mass", a drug prescribed to treat "hypochondriasis," a vague term that included
melancholia). Lincoln's medical history file is
here
posted by matteo
on Jun 7, 2004 -
12 comments
Students for Suicide Pills? On October 12th, 1984, 1900+ students turned out to vote on a referendum asking that their university's Health Services be allowed to offer cyanide pills in the event of nuclear war.
57% of students said they wanted it.
posted by Fat Elvis
on Sep 4, 2001 -
11 comments
