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Nature Geoscience 1, 636–639 (1 October 2008) | doi:10.1038/ngeo325

How a century of ammonia synthesis changed the world

Jan Willem Erisman , Mark A. Sutton , James Galloway , Zbigniew Klimont & Wilfried Winiwarter

Although over 78% of the atmosphere is composed of nitrogen, it exists in its chemically and biologically unusable gaseous form. Haber discovered how ammonia, a chemically reactive, highly usable form of nitrogen, could be synthesized by reacting atmospheric dinitrogen with hydrogen in the presence of iron at high pressures and temperatures.