A Hundred Years of Synthetic Fertilizers

A hundred years ago this year Carl Bosch opened the first synthetic ammonia plant.  Bosch's accomplishment has been essential to the development of the enormous productivity of modern agriculture.   Probably no other development in modern chemistry resulted in such profound change and unintended consequences.  Bosch was a real life modern Prometheus, in contrast to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein whom she called a modern Prometheus.  While he was a fictitious character who did not materially change modern life, he had a more profound effect than Carl Bosch on the image of a chemist in the modern popular imagination.

Fertilizing rice in Burma ( Slate)