
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
About this book
Within months of the start of the First World War, Germany began to run out of the raw materials it needed to make explosives. As Germany faced imminent defeat, chemists such as Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch came to the rescue with Nobel Prize winning discoveries that overcame the shortages and enabled the country to continue in the war. Similarly, Britain could not have sustained its war effort for four years had it not been for chemists like Chaim Weizmann who was later to become the first president of the State of Israel.
Michael Freemantle tells the stories of these and many other chemists and explains how their work underpinned and shaped what became known as The Chemists' War. He reveals:
• how chemistry contributed to the care of the sick and wounded and to the health and safety of troops;
• how coal not only powered the war but was also an important source of the chemicals needed for the manufacture of explosives, dyes, medicines and antiseptics;
• how Britain's production of propellants relied on the slaughter of tens of thousands of whales;
• how a precious metal played a critical role in the war;
• how poisonous chemicals were used as weapons of mass destruction for the first time in the history of warfare and how chemists developed gas masks for protection against these weapons;
• how the British naval blockade of Germany imperilled agricultural production in the United States.
The book will appeal to the general reader as well as the many scientists and historians interested in the Great War.
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Information
Table of contents
- Cover image
- Title page
- Copyright
- Preface
- About the Author
- Contents
- Chapter 1 Much More than Chemical Warfare
- Chapter 2 Calling All Chemists
- Chapter 3 Women’s Contributions
- Chapter 4 Nobel War Efforts
- Chapter 5 Powering the War
- Chapter 6 The Chemistry of a Single Firearm Cartridge
- Chapter 7 The Acetone Crisis
- Chapter 8 Whaling for War
- Chapter 9 Germany in a Fix
- Chapter 10 May Sybil Leslie
- Chapter 11 An Element of War
- Chapter 12 Fritz Haber: Revered and Reviled
- Chapter 13 The World’s First Weapons of Mass Destruction
- Chapter 14 Pope and the Mustard Agents
- Chapter 15 The Biltz Brothers
- Chapter 16 Solutions at Sea
- Chapter 17 America’s Wartime Potash Problem
- Chapter 18 Fractured Friendships
- Chapter 19 One Building, Two Memorials
- Chapter 20 Fifty Chemicals of the Great War
- Bibliography
- Subject Index