Germany
Fritz Haber
1868–1934 Chemist; director of the German chemical warfare program
Haber was a brilliant chemist from Breslau who had converted to Christianity from Judaism in order to pursue a career in Germany, and who, with Carl Bosch, had invented the synthesis of ammonia from nitrogen and hydrogen, the process that made fertilizer, and explosives, from the air. In 1914 he offered his services to the army, and in 1915 he led the development of chlorine gas and supervised its release at Ypres in person. His wife, Clara Immerwahr, a chemist who objected to the work, shot herself on 2 May. Haber received the 1918 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He left Germany in 1933 because of the Nazi laws against Jews and died in Switzerland in January 1934.