A Pioneer of the Military-industrial Complex. Thoughts on Daniel Charles, Between Genius and Genocide (London: Pimlico, Random House, 2006) and David Vandermeulen, L'Esprit du temps. Fritz Haber (Brus

Not everyone who changed history is regarded as a hero by later ages. One such is the German scientist Fritz Haber, who seems to embody the two sides of scientific progress, both bringing improvements to human life and endangering it. A Jew who became a Protestant, he began his scientific career by wishing to preserve humanity from possible famine and finding an efficient way of synthesizing ammonia. But very soon he devoted his research to developing gases and explosives to help the German war effort in World War I. After the war he was accused of war crimes but nonetheless received the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1919. He went on to invent Zyklon gas, which was later used by the Nazis to exterminate the Jews. Two recent books try to capture the personality of this scientist via two different literary forms: Daniel Charles has written a straight biography whereas David Vandermeulen has produced a comic strip version. Jean-Jacques Salomon presents and comments on the two books, reminding us of the main events in Fritz Haber’s life and the repercussions they had for the whole of the human race.