One Hundred Years of the Fritz Haber Institute

Abstract

We outline the institutional history and highlight aspects of the scientific history of the Fritz Haber Institute (FHI) of the Max Planck Society, successor to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry, from its founding in 1911 until about the turn of the 21st century. Established as one of the first two Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes, the Institute began as a much-awaited remedy for what prominent German chemists warned was the waning of Germany's scientific and technological superiority relative to the United States and to other European nations. The history of the Institute has largely paralleled that of 20th century Germany. It spearheaded the research and development of chemical weapons during World War I, then experienced a "golden era" during the 1920s and early 1930s, in spite of financial hardships. Under the National Socialists it suffered a purge of its scientific staff and a diversion of its research into the service of the new regime, accompanied by a breakdown in its international relations. In the immediate aftermath of World War II it suffered crippling material losses, from which it recovered slowly in the postwar era. In 1952, the Institute took the name of its founding director and the following year joined the fledgling Max Planck Society, successor to the Kaiser Wilhelm Society. During the 1950s and 1960s, the Institute supported diverse research into the structure of matter and electron microscopy in its geographically isolated and politically precarious location in West Berlin. In subsequent decades, as Berlin benefited from the policies of détente and later glasnost and the Max Planck Society continued to reassess its preferred model of a research institute, the FHI reorganized around a board of coequal scientific directors and renewed its focus on the investigation of elementary processes on surfaces and interfaces, topics of research that had been central to the work of Fritz Haber and the first "golden era" of the Institute. Throughout its one-hundred-year history, the Institute's pace-setting research has been shaped by dozens of distinguished scientists, among them seven Nobel laureates. Here we highlight the contributions made at the Institute to the fields of gas-phase kinetics and dynamics, early quantum physics, colloid chemistry, electron microscopy, and surface chemistry, and we give an account of the key role the Institute played in implementing the Berlin Electron Synchrotron (BESSY I and II). Current research at the Institute in surface science and catalysis as well as molecular physics and spectroscopy is exemplified in this issue [Angew. Chem. 2011, 123, 10242; Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2011, 50, 10064].

How Did the Tree of Knowledge Get Its Blossom? The Rise of Physical and Theoretical Chemistry, with an Eye on Berlin and Leipzig

“…One of its first two institutes was dedicated to physical chemistry,w ith Fritz Haber as its founding director. [60] * Thef irst chair in theoretical chemistry was established at the University of Cambridge,for John Lennard-Jones who would speak of his operation as a" mathematical laboratory." [61] * Additional journals for physical chemistry were established, Journal de Chimie Physique in France and Faraday Transactions in Britain, among others.…”

“…An influential spokesman-along with Einstein-for German academia abroad, Haber would also co-found the forerunner of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. [60] In contrast to many of his colleagues,Haber embraced the Weimar Republic and was one of its open supporters.S till, neither his great scientific merits nor his unbridled patriotism sufficed to stave off his loss of status once the Nazis rose to power. Ill and heart-broken, Haber died in Basel less than ay ear after being driven out of Germany.…”

Much Polyphony but Little Harmony: Otto Sackur’s Groping for a Quantum Theory of Gases

“…In his 1900 paper where he enunciated the quantum hypothesis, Planck had argued that an actual computation of a state's probability 18 To a modern reader, Sackur's talk about a tendency of molecules to clump in phase regions may suggest some, albeit naive, anticipation of quantum statistics [6]. However the main problem that quantum statistics had to deal with, namely the extensivity of entropy, was not considered here.…”

Moleküle an Oberflächen: 100 Jahre Physikalische Chemie in Berlin‐Dahlem

“…Seine Geschichte wurde bereits in einer Monographie [1] und in einem Artikel von B. Friedrich et al [2] ausführlich beschrieben. Oktober 2011 feierte das vormalige Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für Physikalische Chemie und Elektrochemie (das heutige Fritz-Haber-Institut der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft) in Berlin-Dahlem den 100.…”

“…Jahrestag seiner Gründung. Seine Geschichte wurde bereits in einer Monographie [1] und in einem Artikel von B. Friedrich et al [2] ausführlich beschrieben. Das vorliegende Essay ist eine mehr persçnliche Schilderung, die als Vortrag zur Jahrhundertfeier gehalten wurde, und konzentriert sich im Wesentlichen auf eine Reihe von Arbeiten aus dem Institut, die zum Verständnis der Wechselwirkung zwischen Molekülen und Festkçrperoberflächen beigetragen haben.…”