Conant, James B

Conant, James Bryant

ACHIEVEMENT(S): President of Harvard University, and U.S. High

Commissioner for Western Germany following the Second World War

NICKNAME/ALIAS: None

DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH: March 26, 1893, Dorchester, MA

DATE/PLACE OF DEATH/AGE AT DEATH: February 11, 1978, Hanover, NH. Aged 84

DISCIPLINE: Educator, chemist

FIELD: Chemistry

LANGUAGE: English

PARENTS: James Scott Conant; Jennett Orr Bryant

SIBLINGS: 2 older sisters

SPOUSE: Grace Richards

CHILDREN: 2 sons

EDUCATION: Roxbury Latin School, Boston; Harvard University, Cambridge,

Massachusetts

MAJOR WORK: None

LIFE AND TIMES:

Conant gave a double doctoral dissertation in physical and biological chemistry. He then concentrated on organic chemistry as seen from the viewpoint of physical chemistry, and for the next 15 years, from 1919 to 1934, was a major contributor to the flourishing field of physical organic chemistry in the United States.

In 1917, he entered the Chemical Warfare Service Corps of the U.S. Army, where he was placed in charge of manufacturing lewisite, a deadly gas, in Willoughby, OH. During the 1920s, Conant quickly won recognition as a brilliant research chemist, particularly in the fields of reaction mechanisms, electrical chemistry and biochemistry. He became a full professor in 1927 and from 1931 to 1933, led the Department of Chemistry, which, under his guidance, grew physically and in prestige. During this time, he wrote more than 80

research papers in chemistry.

Conant's research ended in 1933 with his unexpected selection as president of Harvard, a post he would hold for 20 years. The key issues confronting Conant were Harvard's declining reputation for academic rigor and its declining enrolment as a result of the

depression. Conant argued that eligibility to enter Harvard should be based on merit and in his first President’s report recommended a National Scholar's program based on intellectual merit.

Within five years the idea caught on throughout the United States. Conant also created new professorships, and new procedures for appointments, promotions, and tenure to ensure faculty excellence, and encouraged coeducation by eliminating separate classes for Radcliffe women’s college and Harvard students and by admitting women to the law and medical schools.

In the late 1930s, Conant became a central figure in organizing American science for the Second World War. He was deeply involved with the Office of Scientific Research and Development led by American electrical engineer Bush*, and from 1940 worked with the National Defense Research Council (NDRC) in its new weapons Research and Development group, which had the task of mobilizing scientists for the war effort.

In 1941, Conant went to Great Britain to establish a London NDRC office and to encourage an exchange of scientific information between the British and the Americans. It was here he learned about the applications of radar.

From 1941 to 1945, Conant was chairman of NDRC, which was responsible for thousands of projects, including explosives, smoke generators, microwave radar, electronic countermeasures, and uranium fission. He also served as a high-profile adviser on Roosevelt's Rubber Survey Committee, which successfully organized the production of synthetic rubber.

He began to devote more and more time to the uranium fission project, authorizing and overseeing its transformation from an energy development program to an all-out atomic weapons program. In late 1940, he joined Bush, Henry Stimson, General George C. Marshall, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt* in the top policy group for the atomic bomb, the use of which he favored. After the war, Conant served as senior adviser to the National Science Foundation and to the Atomic Energy Commission.

In 1947, Conant returned to Harvard, which in his absence had effectively been managed by the provost, Paul Buck. Resuming his duties at Harvard, Conant again concerned himself with the countrywide problems of education, stressing the need for identifying and developing the talented few In his 1945 Harvard report, “General Education in a Free Society”, he said that pre-collegiate education should consist of training in democratic values, and its mission should be to sort out the college-bound from the "vocational classes". He urged that colleges stress a general liberal education,

and proposed that courses in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences be an obligatory part of any degree.

In 1950, Conant was a principal advocate before Congress for federal support of science and the formation of the National Science Foundation.

In 1953, after having completed a major work on educational policy “Education and Liberty”, Conant resigned the Harvard presidency to become U.S. High Commissioner to West Germany . When the Federal Republic gained full sovereignty in 1955, he was named U.S. ambassador, holding the position until 1957.

Returning to the United States in 1957, Conant became an important reformer of the American secondary school system and conducted several studies of the comprehensive high school and the junior high school. In 1957, he began a two-year study of American schools under the auspices and finances of John Gardner, president of the Carnegie Corporation, which led to his best-selling book, “The American High School Today”(1959). The book again described the purpose of education as

fundamentally meritocratic.

Conant was particularly successful in writing about science for the layman, as in “On Understanding Science'” (1947). In all, he wrote 10 widely read books on public education, including “Slums and Suburbs” (1961) and “The Education of American Teachers” (1963), which served as a catalyst for extensive reforms in schools. His autobiography, “My Several Lives”, was published in 1970.

Conant was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society of London.

ASSESSMENT: As chemist, educational reformer, and head of a major

university, played a major role in the rise of postwar American science.

EXTRA CONNECTIONS: At Harvard in World War II Fiesler* produced napalm.

ONELINER: James Conant, major WW II science leader

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

EB, DSB, DNB