How to Breed Genius (Carl Bosch bio)

From Thomas Hager's unputdownable : The Alchemy of Air: A Jewish Genius, a Doomed Tycoon, and the Scientific Discovery That Fed the World but Fueled the Rise of Hitler 

Bosch thought carefully before he spoke. Bosch knew something the rest of the men in the room did not. He knew about metals. Bosch had grown up around tools; his father was a successful gas-and-plumbing supplier in Cologne who had fitted their home with a complete workshop and given his boys free run. As a boy, Carl once took a carpenter’s plane to some of his parent’s bedroom furniture (he wanted to see how it looked beneath the surface) and disassembled his mother’s sewing machine. He had an open door into his father’s business and visited the workmen often, learning about pipe fitting, soldering, machining, and woodwork. Bosch had thought seriously about a career in metallurgy. As a young man he did an internship at a metalworking firm.