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.
Зміст
More than Chemical Warfare; The Neglected Face of the War; A Single Round of Firearm Ammunition; Whaling for World War One; Acetone and the Birth of a State; An Element of War; The Synthesis of War; Khaki and Indigo; Chemistry and the Zepellins; Chemistry and the Sinking of the Lusitania; The Potash Problem; Bacilli Killed More than Bullets; The Chemists of War; War, the Mother of Invention?; Images of War; Periodic Table of War; The Scientific Legacy of the War; Subject Index
Про автора
Michael Freemantle is a science writer and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC). After a post-doctoral research fellowship at Oxford University (1967-1969), he worked in the chemical industry for two years. From 1971 to 1985, he taught chemistry at various levels both in the UK and abroad. In 1985, he was appointed Information Officer for IUPAC (International Union of Pure & Applied Chemistry). His duties included editing the IUPAC news magazine Chemistry International. From 1994 to 2007 he was European Science Editor/Senior Correspondent for Chemical & Engineering News – the weekly news magazine of the American Chemical Society. He was then appointed Science Writer in Residence, a part-time post, at Queen’s University Belfast and Queens University Ionic Liquid Laboratories for three years until 2010. Freemantle has written numerous news reports and articles on chemistry, the history of chemistry, and related topics. He is the author, co-author, or editor of more than ten books on chemistry and related subjects including Chemistry and the Environment – the IUPAC Programme (editor), IUPAC, 1990; An Introduction to Ionic Liquids, RSC Publishing, 2009; and Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! How Chemistry Changed the First World War, The History Press, 2012.
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