Five years later Haber received a Nobel Prize for synthesizing ammonia; Bosch and his main assistant received a Nobel in 1931, for developing “chemical high pressure methods.” Ammonia synthesis remained so costly that artificial fertilizers did not truly become common until the 1930s. Nonetheless, the Nobels were richly deserved; the Haber-Bosch process, as it is called, was arguably the most consequential technological development of the twentieth century, and one of the more important human discoveries of any time. The Haber-Bosch process has literally changed the land and sky, reshaped the
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