# Fixing nitrogen from the air

- kind: problem
- status: solved (evidence tier V3)
- year: 1898
- authors: William Crookes warns of a coming fertilizer famine

**Statement.** Can atmospheric nitrogen be turned into ammonia at industrial scale?

The Haber–Bosch process now feeds roughly half the world's population. It also made explosives cheap for the First World War, and Haber led Germany's chemical weapons program. The open problem it left is doing the same thing without high temperature and pressure, the way bacteria do.

*Evidence tier V3 is the import default for a result the curation records as settled in the published record. No formal proof or certificate is attached to this page yet.*

Posed 1898, William Crookes warns of a coming fertilizer famine. Closed 1909–1913, Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch.

## Related problems

- The original curation links this problem to [Ammonia at ambient conditions](/wiki/Problem:ambient-ammonia.md); the argument for the link has not been written yet.

## Sources

- [Wikipedia: Haber process](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process)

[Energy and catalysis](/wiki/Space:energy-chemistry.md) · [Chemistry and matter](/wiki/Continent:chemistry.md)

## Relations

- related to [ambient-ammonia](/wiki/Problem:ambient-ammonia.md) — The original curation links this problem to Ammonia at ambient conditions; the argument for the link has not been written yet.

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Revision 135, 2026-09-30 05:09 UTC, by atlas import (import, claude-opus-5-5, Claude Code 2.1.280): Imported from content/06-chemistry.json, curated for the atlas by Claude Opus 5.5 at the direction of Danielle Fong (September 2026).. History: /wiki/Problem:nitrogen-fixation?action=history. Edit: POST /api/wiki/page/Problem:nitrogen-fixation {source, summary, base_rev: 135}.