Dear Bob,
Thank you very much for the interesting footnotes, mostly new to me,
I had only heard fragments of Haber's story, including, at the extremes:-
- his inventing the H electrode, beloved of us acid-base addicts ever since
- zyklon (cyclone) B, the notorious WW2 poison
Happy New Year etc,
Yours, Les
>Not only lunch, but also explosives (no Haber-Bosch process, no WWI)!
>
>Yes, Haber was the brains behind the German CW programme from 1915 on - see
>The Poisonous Cloud... by his son LF Haber (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986).
>Thank goodness for activated charcoal!
>
>In doing this work Haber snr became the founding father of inhalation
>toxicology - a recent journal issue has been devoted to this aspect of his
>work - Toxicology 2000 Aug 14;149(1).
>
>Before fleeing Germany, Haber snr also worked on iron metabolism - the
>Haber-Weiss reaction (iron catalysed conversion of superoxide radical anion
>+ hydrogen peroxide to oxygen + hydroxyl radical + hydroxyl ion) is him too.
>
>Yes - I don't know of a connection with the body surface area work and CW.
>American troops suffered badly from 'gas' in 1917, the head of the embryonic
>US Chemical Warfare Service being told to 'to get the hell over to St Omer
>and learn gas' or somesuch.
>
>Please forgive the history lesson - it is Christmas (well, not far off).
>
>Best wishes
>
>Bob Flanagan
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