Germany
Carl Bosch
1874–1940 BASF board member who led wartime nitrogen production, 1914–1918
Born in Cologne, Carl Bosch studied metallurgy and mechanical engineering, took a chemistry doctorate at Leipzig in 1898 and joined the chemical firm BASF in 1899. After BASF acquired Fritz Haber's high-pressure ammonia synthesis in 1908, he was given the task of scaling it up, and he and his colleagues replaced Haber's osmium and uranium catalysts with iron. The Oppau nitrogen works opened in 1913. When the British blockade cut off imported saltpeter, Bosch promised the German high command in September 1914 to make nitric acid from ammonia, and Oppau began producing it in May 1915. The larger Leuna works, built from 1916, was in production by April 1917. He shared the 1931 Nobel Prize in Chemistry and died in Heidelberg on 26 April 1940.