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James B. Conant

James Bryant Conant (March 26, 1893 – February 11, 1978) was an American chemist, a transformative President of Harvard University, and the first U.S. Ambassador to West Germany. Conant obtained a Ph.D. in chemistry from Harvard in 1916.

James B. Conant
ForMemRS

Dwight D. Eisenhower

Leland B. Morris (as chargé d'affaires, 1941)

David K. E. Bruce

Abbott Lawrence Lowell

Nathan Marsh Pusey

James Bryant Conant

(1893-03-26)March 26, 1893
Dorchester, Massachusetts, U.S.

February 11, 1978(1978-02-11) (aged 84)
Hanover, New Hampshire, U.S.

Patty Thayer Richards
​
​
(m. 1920)​

Conant family
Jennet Conant (granddaughter)
James F. Conant (grandson)

2

Harvard University (AB, PhD)

American Institute of Chemists Gold Medal (1934)
Commandeur, Légion d'honneur (1936)
Benjamin Franklin Medal (1943)
Priestley Medal (1944)
Medal for Merit (1946)
Kentucky colonel (1946)
Honorary Commander of the Order of the British Empire (1948)
Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (1957)
Presidential Medal of Freedom with Distinction (1963)
Sylvanus Thayer Award (1965)
Clark Kerr Medal (1977)
Fellow of the Royal Society[1]

 United States

Chemical Warfare Service

1917–1919

a gold maple leaf Major

World War I

During World War I, he served in the U.S. Army, where he worked on the development of poison gases, especially Lewisite. He became an assistant professor of chemistry at Harvard University in 1919 and the Sheldon Emery Professor of Organic Chemistry in 1929. He researched the physical structures of natural products, particularly chlorophyll, and he was one of the first to explore the sometimes complex relationship between chemical equilibrium and the reaction rate of chemical processes. He studied the biochemistry of oxyhemoglobin providing insight into the disease methemoglobinemia, helped to explain the structure of chlorophyll, and contributed important insights that underlie modern theories of acid-base chemistry.


In 1933, Conant became the President of Harvard University with a reformist agenda that involved dispensing with a number of customs, including class rankings and the requirement for Latin classes. He abolished athletic scholarships, and instituted an "up or out" policy, under which untenured faculty who were not promoted were terminated. His egalitarian vision of education required a diversified student body, and he promoted the adoption of the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) and co-educational classes. During his presidency, women were admitted to Harvard Medical School and Harvard Law School for the first time.


Conant was appointed to the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC) in 1940, becoming its chairman in 1941. In this capacity, he oversaw vital wartime research projects, including the development of synthetic rubber and the Manhattan Project, which developed the first atomic bombs. On July 16, 1945, he was among the dignitaries present at the Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range for the Trinity nuclear test, the first detonation of an atomic bomb, and was part of the Interim Committee that advised President Harry S. Truman to use atomic bombs on Japan. After the war, he served on the Joint Research and Development Board (JRDC) that was established to coordinate burgeoning defense research, and on the influential General Advisory Committee (GAC) of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC); in the latter capacity he advised the president against starting a development program for the hydrogen bomb.


In his later years at Harvard, Conant taught undergraduate courses on the history and philosophy of science, and wrote books explaining the scientific method to laymen. In 1953, he retired as President of Harvard University and became the United States High Commissioner for Germany, overseeing the restoration of German sovereignty after World War II, and then was Ambassador to West Germany until 1957.


On returning to the United States, Conant criticized the education system in The American High School Today (1959), Slums and Suburbs (1961), and The Education of American Teachers (1963). Between 1965 and 1969, Conant authored his autobiography, My Several Lives (1970). He became increasingly infirm, had a series of strokes in 1977, and died in a nursing home in Hanover, New Hampshire, the following year.

Early life and education[edit]

Conant was born in Dorchester, Massachusetts, on March 26, 1893, the third child and only son of James Scott Conant, a photoengraver, and his wife Jennett Orr (née Bryant).[2] In 1904, Conant was one of 35 boys who passed the competitive admission exam for the Roxbury Latin School in West Roxbury, Massachusetts, and he graduated near the top of his class from the school in 1910.[3]


Encouraged by his science teacher, Newton H. Black, in September of that year he entered Harvard College,[4] where he studied physical chemistry under Theodore W. Richards and organic chemistry under Elmer P. Kohler. He was also an editor of The Harvard Crimson. He joined the Signet Society and Delta Upsilon,[5] and was initiated as a brother of the Omicron chapter of Alpha Chi Sigma in 1912.[6] He graduated Phi Beta Kappa with his Bachelor of Arts in June 1913.[5] He then went to work on his doctorate, which was an unusual double dissertation. The first part, supervised by Richards, concerned "The Electrochemical Behavior of Liquid Sodium Amalgams"; the second, supervised by Kohler, was "A Study of Certain Cyclopropane Derivatives".[7] Harvard awarded Conant his Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1916.[8]

Later years and death[edit]

Between 1965 and 1969, Conant, living with a heart condition, worked on his biography, My Several Lives.[178] He became increasingly infirm, and had a series of strokes in 1977.[179] He died in a nursing home in Hanover, New Hampshire, on February 11, 1978.[180] His body was cremated and his ashes interred in the Thayer-Richards family plot at Mount Auburn Cemetery. He was survived by his wife and sons. His papers are in the Harvard University Archives.[181] Among them was a sealed brown Manila envelope that Conant had given the archives in 1951, with instructions that it was to be opened by the President of Harvard in the 21st century. Opened by Harvard's 28th president, Drew Faust, in 2007, it contained a letter in which Conant expressed his hopes and fears for the future. "You will ... be in charge of a more prosperous and significant institution than the one over which I have the honor to preside", he wrote. "That [Harvard] will maintain the traditions of academic freedom, of tolerance for heresy, I feel sure."[182]

Legacy[edit]

Conant is the namesake of James B. Conant High School in Hoffman Estates, Illinois,[183] and James B. Conant Elementary School in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.[184]

– organic chemist and professor emeritus at Harvard University renowned as the inventor of a militarily effective form of napalm. His award-winning research included work on blood-clotting agents including the first synthesis of vitamin K, synthesis and screening of quinones as antimalarial drugs, work with steroids leading to the synthesis of cortisone, and study of the nature of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.[185]

Louis Fieser

– noted chemist at BF Goodrich who worked on the development of synthetic rubber, contributed to understanding of vulcanization, and developed early techniques for small scale evaluation of rubbers.[186]

Benjamin S. Garvey

– was the Morris Loeb Professor of Chemistry Emeritus at Harvard University.[187]

Frank Westheimer

Former graduate students of Conant include:

— with Black, N. H. (1920). . New York: Macmillan. OCLC 3639905.

Practical Chemistry: Fundamental Facts and Applications to Modern Life

— (1928). Organic Chemistry. New York: Macmillan.

— (1932). Equilibria and Rates of Some Organic Reactions. New York: Columbia University Press.

— (1933). The Chemistry of Organic Compounds. New York: Macmillan.

— with (1936). Organic Chemistry. New York: Macmillan.

Tishler, Max

— with Black, N. H. (1937). . New York: Macmillan.

New Practical Chemistry

— with Tishler, Max (1939). The Chemistry of Organic Compounds. New York: Macmillan.

— (1944). Our Fighting Faith. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

— with Blatt, A. H. (1947). The Chemistry of Organic Compounds. New York: Macmillan.

— (1948). "On Understanding Science, An Historical Approach". . 35 (1). New Haven: Yale University Press: 33–55. ISSN 0003-0996. PMID 20282982.

American Scientist

— (1948). Education in a Divided World. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

— (1949). The Growth of Experimental Sciences: An Experiment in General Education. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

— with Blatt, A. H. (1949). Fundamentals of Organic Chemistry. New York: Macmillan.

— (1951). . New Haven: Yale University Press.

Science and Common Sense

— (1953). Education and Liberty. Garden City, New York: Doubleday.

— (1955). Gleichheit der Chancen: Erziehung und Gesellschaftsordnung in den Vereinigten Staaten. Bad Manheim: .

Christian Verlag

— (1956). . New Haven: Yale University Press.

The Citadel of Learning

— (1957). . Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Harvard Case Histories in Experimental Science

— (1958). Deutschland und die Freiheit. Frankfurt: Ullstein.

— (1959). . New York: McGraw-Hill.

The American High School Today

— (1959). . Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

The Child, the Parent, and the State

— (1960). Education in the Junior High School Years. New York: McGraw-Hill.

— (1961). . New York: McGraw-Hill.

Slums and Suburbs, A Commentary on Schools in Metropolitan Areas

— (1962). . Berkeley: University of California Press.

Thomas Jefferson and the Development of American Public Education

— (1962). Germany and Freedom, A Personal Appraisal. New York: Capricorn Books.

— (1963). . New York: McGraw-Hill.

The Education of American Teachers

— (1964). Shaping Educational Policy. New York: McGraw-Hill.

— (1964). Two Modes of Thought. New York: Trident Press.

— (1967). . New York: McGraw-Hill.

The Comprehensive High School, A Second Report to Interested Citizens

— (1967). "Scientific Principles and Moral Conduct". . 55 (3). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 311–28. ISSN 0003-0996. PMID 6050417.

American Scientist

— (1970). . New York: Harper & Row. OCLC 58674.

For a complete list of his published scientific papers, see Bartlett 1983, pp. 113–121.

My Several Lives, Memoirs of a Social Inventor

at Project Gutenberg

Works by James Bryant Conant

at Internet Archive

Works by or about James B. Conant

(May 2, 2005). "My Grandfather and the Bomb". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on June 16, 2012. Retrieved June 16, 2012.

Conant, Jennet

Voices of the Manhattan Project

1965 Audio Interview with James B. Conant by Stephane Groueff

. Oregon State University. Retrieved June 16, 2012. Correspondence between Conant and Linus Pauling.

"Participants: James Bryant Conant"