It has been called one of a biggest inventions of a 20th Century, and though it roughly half a world’s race would not be alive today.
A hundred years ago dual German chemists, Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch, devised a approach to renovate nitrogen in a atmosphere into fertiliser, regulating what became famous as a Haber-Bosch process.
But Haber’s place in story is controversial.
He is also deliberate a “father of chemical warfare” for his years of work building and weaponising chlorine and other unwholesome gases during World War One.
Plants need nitrogen: it is one of their 5 simple requirements, along with potassium, phosphorus, H2O and sunlight.
In a healthy state, plants grow, they die, a nitrogen they enclose earnings to a soil, and new plants use it to grow.
Agriculture disrupts that cycle: we collect a plants, and eat them.
From a beginning days of agriculture, farmers detected several ways to forestall stand yields from disappearing over time: by restoring nitrogen to their fields.
Manure has nitrogen. So does compost.
The roots of legumes horde germ that feed nitrogen levels.
That is because it helps to embody peas or beans in stand rotation. Industrial process
But these techniques onslaught to entirely prove a plant’s ardour for nitrogen.
Add more, and a plant grows better.
That is accurately what Fritz Haber worked out how to do, driven in partial by a guarantee of a remunerative agreement from a chemical association BASF.
That company’s engineer, Carl Bosch, afterwards managed to replicate Haber’s routine on an industrial scale.
Both group after won Nobel Prizes – controversially, in Haber’s case, as many by afterwards deliberate him a fight criminal. Find out more
50 Things That Made a Modern Economy highlights a inventions, ideas and innovations that have helped emanate a mercantile universe we live in.
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The Haber-Bosch routine is maybe a many poignant instance of what economists call “technological substitution”, where we seem to have reached some simple earthy limit, afterwards find a workaround.
For many of tellurian history, if we wanted some-more food to support some-more people, afterwards we indispensable some-more land.
But a thing about land, as Mark Twain once joked, is that they are not creation it any more.
Haber and Bosch supposing a substitute: instead of some-more land, make nitrogen fertiliser.
It was like alchemy.
“Brot aus Luft”, as Germans put it, or “Bread from air”.
From atmosphere and utterly a lot of hoary fuels. How it is done
First of all, we need healthy gas as a source of hydrogen, a component to that nitrogen binds to form ammonia.
Then we need appetite to beget impassioned feverishness and pressure.
Haber detected that was required as a matter to mangle a holds between air’s nitrogen atoms and convince them to bond with hydrogen instead.
Imagine a feverishness of a wood-fired pizza oven, with a vigour we would knowledge 2km underneath a sea.
To emanate those conditions on a scale sufficient to furnish 160 million tonnes of ammonia a year – a infancy of that is used for fertilizer – a Haber-Bosch routine currently consumes some-more than 1% of all a world’s energy.
That is a lot of CO emissions. Environmental damage
And there is another really critical ecological concern.
Only some of a nitrogen in fertilizer creates a approach around crops into tellurian stomachs, maybe as small as 15%.
Most of it ends adult in a atmosphere or water.
This is a problem for several reasons.
Compounds like nitrous oxide are absolute hothouse gases.
They infect celebration water.
They also emanate poison rain, that creates soils some-more acidic, disrupting ecosystems, and melancholy biodiversity.
When nitrogen compounds run off into rivers, they further foster a expansion of some organisms some-more than others.
The formula embody sea “dead zones”, where blooms of algae nearby a aspect retard out object and kill a fish below.
The Haber-Bosch routine is not a usually means of these problems, though it is a vital one, and it is not going away.
Demand for fertilizer is projected to double in a entrance century.
In truth, scientists still do not entirely know a long-term impact on a sourroundings of converting so most stable, dead nitrogen from a atmosphere into several other, rarely reactive chemical compounds. Population growth
We are in a center of a tellurian experiment.
One outcome is already clear: copiousness of food for lots some-more people.
If we demeanour during a graph of tellurian population, we will see it fire upwards usually as Haber-Bosch fertilisers start being widely applied.
Again, Haber-Bosch was not a usually reason for a spike in food yields.
New varieties of crops like wheat and rice also played their part.
Still, if we farmed with a best techniques accessible in Fritz Haber’s time, a earth would support about 4 billion people.
Our stream race is around 7 and a half billion, and growing.
Back in 1909, as Haber triumphantly demonstrated his ammonia process, he could frequency have illusory how transformative his work would be.
On one side of a ledger, food to feed billions some-more tellurian souls; on a other, a sustainability predicament that will need some-more talent to solve.
For Haber himself, a consequences of his work were not what he expected.
As a immature man, he converted from Judaism to Christianity, painful to be supposed as a German patriot.
Beyond his work on weaponising chlorine, a Haber-Bosch routine also helped Germany in World War One.
Ammonia can make explosives, as good as fertiliser.
Not usually bread from air, though bombs too.
When a Nazis took energy in a 1930s, however, nothing of this outweighed his Jewish roots.
Stripped of his pursuit and kicked out of a country, Haber died, in a Swiss hotel, a damaged man.
Tim Harford is a FT’s Undercover Economist. 50 Things That Made a Modern Economy was foster on a BBC World Service. You can listen online or subscribe to a programme podcast.

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The recurring trope of almost every cable television series these days is extreme violence, frequently involving the capture, rape and slaughter of young women. Even Henning Mankell’s relatively cosy Wallander series, in its numerous manifestations – Wallander has been played by at least three actors – and the semi-comic Inspector Montalbano serve up frequent, grisly helpings of sex and violence. The Sopranos , the first and still the best of the lot, did not flinch from the rawer aspects of the criminal life, but the bloodshed was always secondary to the drama. In its successors, however, the makers have been steadily ratcheting up the horrors, and seemingly there is no limit they will not breach.
So, what a risk it was for the creators of the successful Glenn Close series Damages to embark on, of all things, a good old-fashioned family saga. The folk in the Netflix series Bloodline , set in the Florida Keys, are the Rayburns, Robert and Sally, played with consummate artistry and ease by Sam Shepard and Sissy Spacek, and their three sons and daughter. Things are going fairly swimmingly at the family-run Rayburn House resort hotel, until the unexpected return of Danny, the eldest son, a deeply damaged but amiable black sheep. When he shows up, Rayburn House slowly begins to turn into something very like the house of Atreus.
The plot of Bloodline has its instances of extreme violence and its morgues are full of mutilated young women, but the unflinching way in which it portrays the savagery at the heart of family life would have been acknowledged and applauded by Sophocles. The twin glories of the series, however, are the quality of the acting and the range and subtlety of the writing. Very little screen entertainment nowadays is made with an adult audience in mind. Bloodline , almost uniquely, is for grown-ups.
The best entrance
Beyonc é , Lemonade
Just ten months after its release, it’s hard to imagine a cultural landscape without Lemonade. Beyoncé’s second visual album, which dropped in February, set the bar high early in the year. By turns blistering, bitter, and blissful, listening to Lemonade for the first time can feel like a kind of baptism, cleansing through its catharsis. So it’s only appropriate that one of the film’s most lasting visuals plays with similar ideas, as Beyoncé begins “Hold Up” with waves breaking through heavy doors. That’s one way to make an entrance.
The best use of social media
Kim Kardashian West, Snapchat
It would take a much higher wordcount to explain the tension that had been building between Taylor Swift and Kanye West for years , but their relationship was more tense than ever when West released a rap mentioning her: “I think me and Taylor might still have sex / Why? / I made that bitch famous. ” West claimed he had her approval for the lines, but Swift hinted at her horror at the Grammy’s. Contentious comments in interviews followed, until Kim Kardashian West came to her husband’s support with a delicious serving of revenge: posting video footage of Taylor’s approval on her Snapchat. A truly electrifying use of personal social media channels that showed Kardashian West’s dominance of the form. It’s bittersweet to remember her triumph after a traumatic assault has seen her move away from her former social media persona.
The best British export
Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Fleabag
Hilarious, depressing, filthy and always surprising – Fleabag was undoubtedly the best of British comedy in 2016. Constantly leaving its audience on a knife-edge between laughter and tears, Phoebe Waller-Bridge – who wrote and starred in the sitcom – offered an irresistible exploration of a woman struggling to entertain those around her while dealing with grief, shame, and insecurities financial and personal. It was extra sweet to see her success translate Stateside when Amazon Prime Video distributed the series. Extra points, too, must go to a show that manages to make a scene starring Hugh Dennis talking about orgasms and his dishwasher moving.
The best revenge
Every woman on Game of Thrones
Game of Thrones has been rightly criticised for its voyeuristic and degrading treatment of women across its six seasons. We’ve seen Arya, Sansa, Cersei, Daenerys, Ellaria and Yara beaten, raped, humiliated and tortured at length. So when this season saw several disparate plotlines culminate with the triumph of the women at their centres, it was hard not to celebrate for them. Particularly sweet was Sansa’s revenge, as she finally sat at the head of her house and murdered her husband using his own preferred method of torture: death by dogs. Let’s hope they don’t fuck up her character (there have been hints of a “the power goes to her head” storyline) in season seven!
The best non-stop monologue
Aoife Duffin, A Girl is a Half-formed Thing
I loved two female-driven monologue performances in 2016: Fleabag at the Soho Theatre was one, and the other was A Girl is a Half-formed Thing at the Young Vic. Following on from runs in Dublin, Edinburgh and Manchester in 2014 and 2015, this production finally came to London this year, and it was transcendent. This uninterrupted 90-minute show is relentlessly traumatic and terribly bleak, but the sheer force of it reminds us of the depths simmering beneath the faces of every passing person you meet.
The best nostalgic romance
Barry Jenkins, Moonlight
2016 has been a year thick with nostalgia: from Stranger Things to La Land and beyond. Moonlight , a coming-of-age film set in Eighties Miami by director Barry Jenkins – described by one critic as ” Carol meets Frank Ocean” – is the most nuanced and stylish of the lot. Following the troubled youngster Chiron as he grows up, discovers his sexuality, and even falls in love, Moonlight seduces you from its very first frame. An honourable mention, too, must go to the Black Mirror episode “San Junipero”, which managed to transcend all the melodramtic, po-faced elements of your typical Black Mirror episode by choosing to look at the potential positive aspects of future technology.
The best exit
Damien Chazelle, La Land
It’s not out in the UK until 12 January, but La Land has dominated the cinematic conversation in 2016. A lush, sweeping musical centring on two LA romantics (Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone), it spends its two-hour run time hovering between fantasy and reality. It’s irresistible throughout, but it’s the final scene – a dreamy musical montage with a gorgeous score – that knocks the wind out of its audience. I’ve seen this film three times, and so far I haven’t managed to not bawl my eyes out throughout. Just go and see it, okay?

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It’s not exactly official, but it looks like “Will & Grace” is making a comeback.
Actor Leslie Jordan, who won an Emmy for his portrayal of Beverley Leslie, rival to character Karen Walker, told San Diego radio station KPBS that the show is “absolutely” coming back. The 61-year-old said NBC has ordered 10 episodes of the sitcom, and that the reboot will start shooting in July.
It makes sense, considering the cast reunited for a special election-themed online episode in September, 10 years after the series wrapped.
Adding more creedence to the rumors? Megan Mullally, who played brassy socialite Karen, posted a photo of the cast looking very celebratory on Sunday.
self-explan

We’ve known that bacteria live in our intestines as far back as the 1680s, when Leeuwenhoek first looked through his microscope.
See the latest news and share your comments with CNN Health on Facebook and Twitter .
Richard G. “Bugs” Stevens is a professor in the School of Medicine at the University of Connecticut.
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