This volume occasioned by the centenary of the Fritz Haber Institute formerly the Institute
for Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry covers the institute's scientific and
institutional history from its founding until the present. The institute was among the earliest
established by the Kaiser Wilhelm Society and its inauguration was one of the first steps in
the development of Berlin-Dahlem into a center for scientific research. Its establishment was
made possible by an endowment from Leopold Koppel granted on the condition that Fritz Haber
well-known for his discovery of a method to synthesize ammonia from its elements be made its
director. The history of the institute has largely paralleled that of 20th-century Germany. It
undertook controversial weapons research during World War I followed by a Golden Era during
the 1920s in spite of financial hardships. Under the National Socialists it experienced a
purge of its scientific staff and a diversion of its research into the service of the new
regime accompanied by a breakdown in its international relations. In the immediate aftermath
of World War II it suffered crippling material losses from which it recovered slowly in the
post-war era. In 1953 shortly after taking the name of its founding director the institute
joined the fledgling Max Planck Society. During the 1950s and 60s the institute supported
diverse researches into the structure ofmatter and electron microscopy in a territorially
insular and politically precarious West-Berlin. In subsequent decades as both Berlin and the
Max Planck Society underwent significant changes the institute reorganized around a board of
coequal scientific directors and a renewed focus on the investigation of elementary processes
on surfaces and interfaces topics of research that had been central to the work of Fritz Haber
and the first Golden Era of the institute.
