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What Connects Bones, Bird Poop, and Toxic Green Slime? Hint: Without It, Half of Us Wouldn't Be Alive Today

Gastropod

CHAPTER

The History of the Haber Bosch Process

Haber Bosch won the Nobel Prize for what has become known as making bread out of air. Carl Buss figured out how to make Haber's tiny expensive lab-sized reactor into a gigantic factory, and by 1913, the nitrogen limiting factor had it become unlimited. President Franklin Roosevelt in the early 30s said essentially we need a national phosphorus policy because this has everything to do with our national security. He even wrote this into a law that allowed any citizen to seize an uninhabited island like those guano islands that might be a phosphorus reserve.

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