Sackur studied at the University of Breslau, receiving his doctorate there in 1901 under Richard Abegg.
He then worked in London before joining the Fritz Haber Institute in Berlin, becoming the head of the physical chemistry department early 1914.
[1] After the outbreak of WWI, he was enlisted for military research, and during his free time he carried out experiments on the behavior of gases at low temperatures.
Gerhard Leopold Just (1877 - 1948), an assistant to Haber, lost his right hand in the explosion.
[2][3] Haber, Just, and Sackur were back then researching on improvements to the T-Shell, with the aim of finding some chemical that could serve both as an explosive and an irritant.