Q. Is it true that we can make fertilizer from nitrogen in the air?

A. First, Harber Bosch and others in Germany developed a method to synthesize ammonia with the nitrogen in the air and industrially produced hydrogen as raw materials (Harber Method). Then, they produced nitric acid with this ammonia as the raw material (Ostwald Method) and moreover succeeded in producing nitrogen fertilizer by using the nitric acid. Harber Bosch originally intended to artificially produce ammonia, an ingredient of gunpowder. Although Chile saltpeter (produced in Chile) is one of the indispensable materials for producing gunpowder, he planned to manufacture it artificially since Germany was not able to import sufficient quantities of the material. It is reported that German Kaiser Wilhelm II said, "We can win the war against the whole world" after having heard about the success of the ammonia synthesis method. This can be viewed as a good example of how scientific technology can be used for both good and bad.