Word: nitrogen
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...every twelve hours or so. A culture of algae is always at the height of its growing season. The whole plant is edible, and since it grows under water, it never suffers from wind, hail or frost. It can be fed with nutrients (chiefly carbon dioxide and combined nitrogen) by the simple method of dissolving them in water...
Organic chemistry, which has produced hundreds of thousands of compounds, is built on the fact that carbon atoms combine with one another to form rings and chains. Nitrogen atoms will do the same thing to a limited extent, but making nitrogen atoms link up with one another is extremely difficult on more than a laboratory scale. Hydrazine, which has two linked nitrogen atoms each attached to two hydrogen atoms, is the first of these linked "hydronitrogens" that has been produced outside the laboratory in appreciable quantities...
During World War II, the Germans made hydrazine for use as a rocket fuel. The chemical bond between the two nitrogen atoms contains a large amount of energy, and when it is broken during combustion, the energy is released, giving the rocket a powerful push. In the U.S., hydrazine (which is poisonous and blows up if improperly handled) will be used in rocket fuels, but in the long run it will be more important in chemical synthesis. Here the possibilities are almost endless. Each of hydrazine's four hydrogen atoms is highly reactive; each can be replaced, sometimes...
Many scientists think that life appeared on earth when the atmosphere, instead of being its present mixture of oxygen, nitrogen and carbon dioxide, contained methena, ammonia and hydrogen. These ingredients, still to be found in the atmospheres of Jupiter and Saturn, slowly combined into larger and larger organic (carbon-containing) molecules, according to the hypothesis. At last one molecule, a complex protein, showed the ability to absorb other molecules and create replicas of itself out of their material. This "Adam molecule" was the first life; it could grow and reproduce itself...
Dentist Rodriguez sees little danger that indiscriminate use of his fluid will upset the earth's nitrogen cycle by cutting town the supply of decaying animal tissue. His formula, he admits, may never attain such worldwide acceptance...