Haber’s story embodies the paradoxes of science: the double edge to our manipulations of nature, the good and evil that can flow not only from the same man but the same knowledge. Haber brought a vital new source of fertility and an awful new weapon into the world; as his biographer wrote, “[I]t’s the same science and the same man doing both.” Yet this dualism dividing the benefactor of agriculture from the chemical weapons maker is far too pat, for even Haber’s benefaction has proven decidedly to be a mixed blessing.
