Fritz Haber and the two faces of being and knowing

Abstract

The rise of academic knowledge has resulted in many well-known beneficial contributions to society, but it has also brought out an array of deleterious effects, such as the expansion of destructive power and, to some extent, the intensification of psychological attitudes of indifference and distancing from human affection and social solidarity. Such ambivalence is here analyzed through the life example of an extraordinary couple of scientists: The Jewish-German Chemist Fritz Haber (1868 - 1934), whose discoveries resulted in the survival of millions of people; and the Jewish-German Clara Immerwahr (1870 - 1915), a pioneer woman scientist whose renown has taken longer to be acknowledged. As it happened, Haber was unable to make good and sustainable his married relationship with Immerwahr perhaps as a consequence of his apathy or unethical use of his discoveries in chemistry. Other situations are here contextualized to conclude the need for reconciliation between simplicity towards life and academicism.