The Dark Side of Great Men

Philipp Lenard

I read a little about Philipp Lenard while reading Michio Kaku's Einstein's Cosmos. Philipp Lenard is a physicist of the first order. He made important discoveries about cathode rays and was awarded the 1905 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on them. This is from the days when people still won Nobel Prizes single-handedly. As we know now, without cathode ray tubes, television would not have been possible (the horror!). Other than the Nobel Prize, he also won the Royal Society's Rumford Medal (1896) and the Franklin Institute's Franklin Medal (1932), among other honours. This is a man who regularly gets entries in books about "greatest scientists".

However, Lenard, who was born in Brastilava (now the capital of the Slovak Republic), which was then part of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire in 1862,  is an avowed German nationalist. He despised "English physics", which he claimed had stolen ideas from German physicists. he felt that Germany should only relied on "Deutsche physics" and denounced the work of ethnic Jewish physicians, in particular those of Albert Einstein's. He called relativity a "Jewish fraud".

He became a member of the Nazi Party long before it came to power. His deep-seated anti-Semitism caused him to block Einstein's nomination for the Nobel Prize on more than one occasion (Einstein finally won in 1921 for his work on the photoelectric effect, instead of the more famous and worldview-changing relativity theories). When Hitler came to power, he came one of the dictator's advisers and was Chief of Aryan Physics.

When the Allied forces occupied Germany, he was dismissed from his post as emeritus professor at Heidelburg University, Germany. He died in 1947.


Thomas Alva Edison

Well, just about everyone knows who Edison was. Other than his many inventions, he was also the co-founder of a company that would become the predecessor to today's General Electric. The Wizard of Menlo Park was definitely a magician of sorts.

One of the most interesting episodes in his life is the "War of Currents" in the late 1880s. As electricity became more prominent, a battled ensued to decide whether direct current (DC) or alternating current (AC) would become the type of current supplied to electrical grids.

Edison championed DC, which became the standard electricity distributed in the US at first. He also earned lots of money from patent royalties arising from the use of DC. He put in lots effort and money in promoting and maintaining his grip on DC usage.

On the side of the Atlantic ocean, several scientists and innovators championed the use of AC. These people included George Westinghouse and Nikola Tesla, "The Wizard of the West". Tesla used to work for Edison, but he was largely under-appreciated. In fact, Tesla was cheated of compensation for his work in improving Edison's inefficient dynamo, leading to bad blood between them.

Well, Edison was no Mr. Nice Guy. Edison launched a massive PR campaign to discredit AC. This included  spreading misinformation on fatal AC accidents and lobbying US Congress officials. One of his more spectacularly disgusting campaigns is to use AC to fatally electrocute animals, at first stray dogs and cats, to "show" how "dangerous" AC would be to humans. Years later, even after losing the War of the Currents, Edison's film crew made a film on electrocuting an elephant named Topsy in 1903. This disgusting event was witnessed by over 1,500 people and the film was screened all over America.

Another dastardly thing he did was to secretly fund the development of the electric chair. The funny thing is, Edison was opposed to capital punishment. But he was so insistent on discrediting AC that he funded this project to show that AC is way deadlier than DC.

The infamous chair was first used on August 6, 1890 on convicted murderer William Kemmler. A technician misjudged the voltage needed, and the first jolt of current, which lasted for 17 seconds, only left Kemmler badly injured (oh, can you imagine the screaming, and the smell of fried human meat?). Horror-struck prison staff then turned on the current for a second time and made sure Kemmler was not "injured" any more. The scene was revolting, to say the least.

A reporter who witnessed this called it "an awful spectacle, far worse than hanging". George Westinghouse, also Edison's great rival in the War of the Currents, and Tesla's collaborator, commented wryly, "They would have done better using an axe." Ironically, Westinghouse later won a medal named after Edison, while Edison was still alive, for his contributions in developing AC systems.

How funnily life turns out!


Fritz Haber

Without Fritz Haber's work, agriculture as we know it today could not have existed. The Green Revolution could not have happened. The number of people starving would undoubtedly be much higher. At a glance, he could probably qualify for the Nobel Peace Prize as well.

Together with Carl Bosch, Haber developed the Haber-Bosch process, which allowed for the catalytic formation of ammonia from hydrogen and atmospheric nitrogen under conditions of high temperature and pressure. Haber won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1918 for his work on this process. Carl Bosch himself later shared a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1931 for his work in high-pressure chemistry. Bosch's uncle, Robert, pioneered the development of the spark plug. The Haber-Bosch process allowed for the development of nitrogen-based fertilisers and also explosives.

Haber played a major role in the development of chemical warfare in World War 1. He led the teams that developed the use of chlorine and other deadly gases. He also personally oversaw their deployment on the front despite it contravening the Hague Convention of 1907. He also defended their use, saying death is death no matter what means are used.

His work in chemical warfare so greatly distressed his first wife, Clara Immerwahr, that she committed suicide. On the day she died, he left for the Easter Front to supervise the deployment of poison gas against the Russians, leaving behind his grieving 13-year old son, Hermann. During World War 2, Hermann emigrated to the US and committed suicide in 1946 (Fritz Haber had died in 1934).

During World War 1, Haber was awarded the rank of captain by the Kaiser. He was a strongly patriotic German. He even said, "During peace time, a scientist belongs to the world, but during war time, he belongs to his country." His life would be marked by ethical repercussions stemming from his work.

In the 1920s, scientists working at his institute developed Zyklon A, a cyanide-based gas that was largely used as an insecticide. During the Holocaust, Zyklon A was modified into Zyklon B, which was widely used in the gas chambers to exterminate people, including six million Jews.

Here's the clincher: Fritz Haber was a Jew.

He had left Germany for England in 1933 as animosity against Jews in Germany was growing. He died in Basel, Switzerland, in 1934, while on his way to what is now known as Israel.

Fritz Haber's work with poison gases has been heavily-criticised by his contemporaries and current scientists. Yet his contributions via the Haber-Bosch process is so significant. Had he lived to know of the Holocaust, I am sure he would have been profoundly haunted by what he had wrought. You can read about his life and work in Master Mind by Daniel Charles.