“Quiet, nitrogen occupies some 78% of our atmosphere. Cleaving atom to atom in a triple-bonded embrace, atmospheric nitrogen keeps to itself, unreactive and of little use unless sundered by lightning, or unstitched by underground microbes busily “fixing” it to beneficial compounds that are essential to plant growth.

Powerful, nitrogen was first known as a component of salts of ammonia and saltpeter (potassium nitrate, or nitre), key to the invention of gunpowder and fireworks.”