He was the son of a master plumber and had received a secondary education in a Technical Oberrealschule. He studied there four semesters of metallurgy.
Bosch was a German chemist-engineer. His development of high pressure chemical plant enabled the laboratory Haber process to be translated into the immensely important industrial Haber-Bosch process. He was awarded the 1931 Nobel Prize for Chemistry.
Bosch began his career in a foundry, before being allowed by his father to pursue a formal education at the University of Leipzig. There he stayed for three years.
After gaining his PhD in 1898, Bosch joined the research staff of Badische Anilin und Soda Fabrik (BASF) in Ludwigshafen. There he was assigned to the main laboratory and at first worked on ozo dyes and phthalic acid anhydride, a compound needed for the synthesis of artificial indigo.
He then became involved in the major task facing German industry: the synthetic of ammonia, for use in both agriculture and the armaments industry.
In 1907, Fritz Haber had demonstrated that, with high temperature and pressures and appropriate catalysts, ammonia could be synthesized from atmospheric nitrogen and nitrogen.
The Haber process, however, then was restricted to the laboratory. Bosch was assigned the task of transforming the process into an industrial plant: he did this at Oppau, where BASF’s first high pressure ammonia plant opened in 1909.
It was not an easy work, but he was ambitious, because no one had yet built a plant that would operate at a very high pressure.
He then became CEO in 1919. By 1930 well over 2 million tons of ammonia was being produce annually.
In 1925, he was additionally appointed CEO of the them newly created IG Farbenindustrie AG and in 1935 Bosch became chairman of the supervisory board of this large chemical company.
In 1937 Bosch was elected president of the Kaiser Wilhelm Gesellschaft, the premier scientific society in Germany.
He received the Nobel Prize in 1931 for the invention and development of chemical high pressure methods.
Nobel Prize: Bosch, Carl
