Carl Bosch

Carl Bosch was a German chemist and engineer who led the effort at BASF to scale Fritz Haber's laboratory ammonia synthesis into an industrial process between 1909 and 1913, solving problems of high-pressure vessel design, catalyst durability and hydrogen supply that a laboratory demonstration did not have to face; the resulting Haber-Bosch process became one of the most consequential industrial processes of the twentieth century. He later extended high-pressure catalytic methods to coal liquefaction and other syntheses, helped found the IG Farben conglomerate in 1925 and served as its first head, and was awarded the 1931 Nobel Prize in Chemistry jointly with Friedrich Bergius for the invention and development of high-pressure chemical methods. From 1937 until his death in 1940 he served as president of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society, the same institution whose conduct under National Socialism the atlas records elsewhere; Bosch himself objected to the Nazi dismissal of Jewish scientists and lost influence within German industry over the final years of his presidency as a result.