Life, Death and Bubbles: The Story of Earth’s Nitrogen

In 1898, the eminent scientist William Crookes was named president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. In his inaugural address he warned of a huge impending disaster: starvation on a colossal scale because humanity would run out of natural fertilisers supplying nitrogen.

This warning kickstarted our civilisation’s huge interventions in the natural nitrogen cycle of Earth, sometimes intentional, sometimes not. This lecture discusses the consequences of those interventions today, what we know about how the nitrogen cycle works, and what the future holds.