Well everyone it has been a fun and good run but the end of the semester is upon us, so I will leave you with one final Culture Corner. Do not feel bad, like Bob Barker I intend to end it the same way I started, so here we go.
The word of the week is: Valediction
Valediction (noun) is an act of saying goodbye or farewell. Typically used in formal situations, such as graduation and commencement ceremonies, thus the name for the valedictorian and valedictory address.
When used in a sentence it would go a little like this:
General Douglas MacArthur’s valediction was short and sweet, saying, “I shall return,” when he was told to retreat to Australia before the collapse of the Bataan peninsula.
Subject of the Week: Fritz Haber
Fritz Haber (1868-1934) is a Nobel Prize winning chemist from the early part of the 20th century.
Haber was a Jew born in Breslau, Germany. He studied at several universities in and around Germany. After graduating he became very interested in chemical technology and for a time worked at his father’s chemical business before taking up a job as an assistant to Hans Bunte the professor of Chemical Technology, at Karlsruhe.
This is where his greatest and in many cases forgotten work happened. He won the Nobel Prize in 1918 for discovering a way to remove nitrogen from the air. This, in effect, was the beginning to the creation of synthetic fertilizers that are used today in hybrid (also known as high yield) farming.
By boosting nitrogen put into the soil it can have a profound effect on plant growth and yield. There is only a small amount of nitrogen in soil, and it is produced as a byproduct from plants. By harnessing the nitrogen in the air, which until Haber figured out how to utilize it, was almost useless for human production since it was hard to separate and then bind in a way that works for farming.