Food & agriculture · 1910

Haber-Bosch process

Nitrogen pulled from the air and made into ammonia, fertilizer that now feeds billions.

Fritz Haber synthesised ammonia at high pressure in 1909 and Carl Bosch scaled it at BASF, reaching industrial output at Oppau in 1913. Roughly half of the nitrogen in human bodies today passed through this process, and without it the world could feed perhaps half its population.

See it in the living tree Wikipedia

Arcs above join it to what it stood on, arcs below to what it led to. The bar places this stretch on the tree's whole timeline.

What it built on 4

Bessemer steel 1856
Laws of thermodynamics 1850
Agricultural chemistry 1840
Guano fertilizer 1840

What it led to 3

Fischer-Tropsch process 1925
Green Revolution 1961
Nitrogen-fixing cereals ~2042

Related measurements

The dashed line marks when it first worked.

People fed by synthetic nitrogen fertilizer Latest: 8.09B people (2023) Source: Our World in Data

Nitrogen fertilizer per hectare of cropland Latest: 67.7 kg/ha (2023) Source: Our World in Data

Cereal yield Latest: 4.21 t/ha (2024) Source: Our World in Data