Carl Bosch
Bosch, Carl (1874-1940), a German chemist, became known for using experimental laboratory processes to develop commercial methods of production. He shared the 1931 Nobel Prize in chemistry with Friedrich Bergius for their work in high-pressure methods of manufacturing ammonia and liquefying coal.
Before earning his Ph.D. degree in chemistry from the University of Leipzig in 1898, Bosch studied engineering and trained in an ironworks. In 1899, he joined a major German chemicals company. By 1914, he successfully adapted for industrial use a high-pressure process for synthesizing ammonia from hydrogen and atmospheric nitrogen. This process had been patented in 1910 by Fritz Haber, who had developed it on a small scale in his laboratory.
Previously, natural deposits of nitrates in Chile, thousands of miles (kilometers) away from Europe, were the only major source of the nitrogen compounds needed to produce fertilizers and explosives. Bosch's industrial synthesis of nitrogen helped to meet Germany's demand for explosives during World War I (1914-1918). After the war, it made possible the establishment of a large-scale ammonia fertilizer industry.
Bosch became the managing director of his company in 1919, but he remained active in his laboratory. In 1923, he extended his technique of synthesizing ammonia to the synthesis of methanol from carbon monoxide and hydrogen. In 1925, his company merged with six other German chemical firms to become the giant I. G. Farben. Bosch became president and, in 1935, chairman of the board. Also in 1925, the company bought rights to Friedrich Bergius's method of making fuel from coal dust and hydrogen. Although Bosch failed to make this method profitable on the industrial scale, he and Bergius shared the 1931 Nobel Prize in chemistry for developing chemical high-pressure synthesis techniques.