The World's Greatest Fix

A History of Nitrogen and Agriculture
Erscheinungsjahr 2004
ISBN: 978-0-19-516582-1
Verlag: Oxford University Press

Buch, Englisch, 256 Seiten, Format (B × H): 161 mm x 240 mm, Gewicht: 552 g

Tells the story of how humans have used their ingenuity throughout history to maintain soil fertility

DESCRIPTION:
This book tells the story of how humans have used their ingenuity throughout history to maintain soil fertility, and to avoid famine through productive agriculture. It starts with a layman's guide to the relevant chemistry of nitrogen and shows how the development of towns and fixed settlements meant that methods had to be found to maintain the fertility of fields exploited year after year. The author looks at the way this was done, in purely empirical fashion, starting with the Chinese, the Incas, the Mayas, and the Romans. He then goes on to examine the development of agriculture in England, including the use of field rotations. Later chapters deal with the birth of the nitrogen fixation industry and the political and economic consequences of it in Europe (First World War) and South America (guano and nitrate).
The World's Greatest Fix shows how industrial fixation has developed from a laboratory process newly discovered at the beginning of the twentieth century into the impressive and sophisticated procedure in use today.

CONTENTS:
1. Nitrogen Fixation, Agriculture, and the Environment
2. The Development of Agriculture: Maintaining Soil Fertility
3. The Development of English Agriculture and the Recognition of the Fertilizer Deficit
4. The Discover of Nitrogen and the Disappearance of Alchemical Nitre
5. The Triumph of Industrial Chemistry
6. The Continuing Mystery of Biological Nitrogen Fixation
7. Nitrogen, Threat or Benefaction? The Spectre at the Feast

Zielgruppe

Students of chemistry and the history and science of agriculture

Autoren/Hrsg.

Leigh, G. J.

Fachgebiete

• Technische Wissenschaften Technik Allgemein Technikgeschichte
• Naturwissenschaften Agrarwissenschaften Agrarwissenschaften
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Wissenschafts- und Universitätsgeschichte
• Naturwissenschaften Chemie Chemie Allgemein Geschichte der Chemie
• Naturwissenschaften Agrarwissenschaften Ackerbaukunde, Pflanzenbau Düngemittel, Gründünger

Über Autor(innen)

G. J. LEIGH, Professor of Chemistry, University of Sussex at Brighton