Bosch, Carl (1874-1940)

German metallurgist and chemist. He developed the Haber process from a small-scale technique for the production of ammonia into an industrial high-pressure process that made use of water gas as a source of hydrogen. He shared the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1931 with Friedrich Bergius for his part in inventing and developing high-pressure industrial methods.

Bosch was born in Cologne and studied at Leipzig. He took a job with Badische Anilin und Sodafabrik (BASF), and by 1902 was working on methods of fixing the nitrogen present in the Earth's atmosphere. At that time, the only large sources of nitrogen compounds essential for the production of fertilizers and explosives were in the natural deposits of nitrates in Chile. Learning of the Haber process in 1908, Bosch set up a team of chemists and engineers to improve on it and reproduce it on a large scale. Heavy demand from the military during World War I caused BASF to expand. From 1925 Bosch was chair of the vast industrial conglomerate IG Farbenindustrie AG after its formation from the merger of BASF with other German industrial concerns.

Bosch's other scientific work was on the synthesis of methyl alcohol and of petrol from coal tar.