Bosch, Carl

Carl Bosch, (born Aug. 27, 1874, Cologne, Germany—died April 26, 1940, Heidelberg), German industrial chemist who developed the Haber-Bosch process for high-pressure synthesis of ammonia and received, with Friedrich Bergius, the 1931 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for devising chemical high-pressure methods.

Bosch was educated at the University of Leipzig, where he studied under Johannes Wislicenus and obtained his doctorate in 1898 for research in organic chemistry. His interests were, however, general, and he studied engineering in Charlottenburg in 1894 and obtained workshop experience.

Leaving Leipzig, Bosch worked for BASF AG, of which (when it became part of the cartel IG Farben) he was later president; and here he succeeded in transferring from laboratory to industrial scale Fritz Haber’s process for synthesizing ammonia from its elements, hydrogen and nitrogen, catalytically at high pressures. Research on this process involved the carrying out of more than 20,000 experiments, including an exhaustive search for catalysts among the metals and their compounds. The Haber-Bosch process became the main industrial procedure for nitrogen fixation.

He also invented the Bosch process for preparing hydrogen on a manufacturing scale by passing a mixture of steam and water gas over a suitable catalyst at high temperature.