The World Needs Lots of Nitrogen

In the late 19th century, scientists predicted that world's stocks of natural fertilizers would be exhausted before too much longer. This would lead to a massive food security crisis and ultimately widespread famine and starvation as farms would not be able to produce enough food to feed everyone without fertilizer. Scientists needed to figure out a way to extract the nitrogen from the air around us and turn it into a usable plant fertilizer. But this felt impossible because nitrogen as a gas is extremely unreactive.