James Bryant Conant

Chemist

• Born: March 26, 1893
• Birthplace: Dorchester, Massachusetts
• Died: February 11, 1978
• Place of death: Hanover, New Hampshire

American chemist and educator

Conant helped unravel the mysteries of the components of chlorophyll and hemoglobin. He served as an innovative president of Harvard University, U.S. high commissioner to Germany after World War II, and ambassador to the newly created German Federal Republic.

Areas of achievement Chemistry, education, diplomacy

Early Life

James Bryant Conant (KOH-nehnt) was the son of James Scott Conant, a photoengraver who had served in both the Union army and navy during the Civil War and had witnessed the famed battle between the Monitor and the Merrimac, and Jennet Orr Bryant Conant, the daughter of a shoe and leather salesman. Both of Conant’s parents were greatly influenced by Swedenborgianism, which Conant claimed made him suspicious of the standard defenses of Christianity. His father’s interest in applied chemistry in his photoengraving work sparked an interest in science for the young Conant. He was the only youngster in his neighborhood who had his own laboratory. At an early age, he began developing formulas for almost everything, including the family’s grocery buying, which his mother claimed saved the household money.

When Conant was ten, he applied for admission to Roxbury Latin School, a college preparatory school with a good reputation in chemistry and physics. He failed the spelling part of his admissions test, but his strong-willed mother managed to get him admitted. While at Roxbury, Conant came under the influence of Newton Henry Black, who encouraged him to pursue the study of chemistry by directing him into qualitative analysis, a subject usually reserved for college sophomores.

In 1910, Conant entered Harvard University, where he finished the undergraduate program in three years. Professor Black helped Conant obtain credit for the work in chemistry he had done at Roxbury. His mother insisted that he also take a course in philosophy, since she did not want him to become a narrow-minded chemist. He later regarded this course and one in art and culture of the Renaissance as giving him a worldview.

At Harvard, Professor Elmer Peter Kohler helped shape Conant’s attitudes and opinions with a zest for detailed, difficult tasks. Conant credited Kohler for bringing commonsense judgment to bear on human problems, an approach that Conant later emulated in the worlds of academe and diplomacy.

Conant edited the Harvard Crimson as a sophomore, which qualified him for admission into the Signet, the school’s select literary club. It was in this circle that Conant received his general education, through the sophisticated conversations around the luncheon tables. Later, as president, Conant would tell entering students, “A Harvard education is what you will receive outside of class.”

On graduating with an A.B. in chemistry, Conant immediately began working toward his Ph.D. at Harvard, which he received in 1916. Conant attracted the attention of his professors as a promising chemist and teacher. The lean six-footer always wore glasses and had a congenial smile. He developed the habit of sliding back his cuff and quickly glancing at his watch, as if he were always in a hurry.

Life’s Work

Conant was a brilliant research chemist who did experiments in reduction and oxidation, free radicals, quantitative organic reactions, and superacid solutions. He helped in creating an understanding of the molecular structure of chlorophyll and hemoglobin, for which he was considered for a Nobel Prize. He wrote two widely used textbooks, Practical Chemistry (1920) and Chemistry of Organic Compounds (1933), and a scientific text for general readers, On Understanding Science (1947).

In the summer before receiving his doctorate, Conant worked as a chemist in industry at the Midvale Steel Company in Philadelphia, developing new analytical procedures. This experience taught him the inner politics and production problems of a manufacturing plant. He was given an intimate preview of the marriage of chemistry and American industry. In 1916, he worked with colleagues to open a plant to manufacture benzoic acid from toluene. A tragic fire destroyed the plant, and Conant learned the hazards of the free enterprise system when he was forced to pay off stockholders from the royalties of one of his patents.

Conant accepted an invitation to return to Harvard as an instructor in 1916, and the following summer he accepted a position with the Bureau of Chemistry in Washington, D.C. Because the United States had entered World War I on the side of the Allies, Conant worked on a process for manufacturing a drug that hitherto had been imported from Germany. Later he joined a research team at the American University in Washington, where he became a first lieutenant in the Sanitary Corps of the army. He advanced to the rank of major in the Chemical Warfare Service. He went to Willoughby, Ohio, where he worked in a converted auto factory on chemical weapons for the war.

Following World War I, Conant was named assistant professor of chemistry at Harvard. He worked closely with Nobel Prize winner Theodore William Richards and became enamored of his daughter, Grace, whom he affectionately called “Patty.” They were married in April of 1921 and later became the parents of two sons, Theodore and James. Conant told his young bride that he had three ambitions beyond his marriage to her: to become a leading organic chemist, to be president of Harvard University, and to be named a member of the president’s cabinet, possibly secretary of the interior. Conant reached the first two goals and possibly exceeded the third in government service as United States high commissioner and later ambassador to Germany.

In 1923, Conant traveled to Germany to satisfy his curiosity about German universities. He had regarded himself as too parochial, having spent most of his time in the academic environment of the Boston area. He wondered what made German science, particularly organic chemistry, so successful. After spending eight months visiting German universities, he concluded that the secret lay in their professorial organization and the rivalry among the schools, prompting them to exert their best academic efforts.

In 1929, Conant was elected the Sheldon Emery Professor of Organic Chemistry and became chair of the department in 1931, where he also continued his research in organic chemistry. During this period, he was rejected as a trustee of his alma mater, Roxbury, because he was not sufficiently well known. In 1933, however, at the age of forty, he was brought into prominence by being chosen as Harvard’s twenty-third president, a position he held for twenty years.

Soon after his election as president, he traveled to England to observe at first hand the systems of Oxford and Cambridge. Since its founding, Harvard had looked to the English model and had followed the Oxford example of making appointments. Former president A. Lawrence Lowell had also introduced Oxford’s tutorial system at Harvard.

Conant was an innovator in education and showed little regard for custom. On his office wall was a plaque that exemplified his willingness to change. It read: “Behold the turtle, he makes progress only when he sticks his neck out.” He wanted the university to be a national rather than a regional school, and in 1934 he established national scholarships to enable young men of outstanding ability to attend Harvard regardless of financial circumstances or regional background. The scholarships were large enough to cover all essential expenses and were arranged on a sliding scale adjusted to the student’s financial need. Conant also followed Lowell’s trend of establishing strong professional schools surrounding the undergraduate college. He paid particular attention to the department of education, which he regarded as critical to the American public educational system. Fearing that teachers were trained more in pedagogy and less in factual content, he established the master of arts degree for teachers in 1935, which required greater concentration in the teachers’ intended subject areas. Although Conant had been opposed to coeducation at Harvard when he became president, he was instrumental in 1943 in forming the agreement of the Harvard corporation with the trustees of Radcliffe College to permit women to gain credit from attending classes on the Harvard campus.

When World War II broke out in Europe, Conant became an early advocate of American intervention on the side of the Allies. Although he had been critical of the anti-German hysteria that accompanied World War I and admitted that he had voted for Woodrow Wilson in 1916 because of his promise to keep the United States out of the war, he saw that fascism in the 1930’s threatened to wipe out a free way of life in Western civilization. To remain silent was suicidal.

In 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt sent Conant to England to serve as a scientific liaison with the British. Roosevelt also named him as chemistry adviser to the National Defense Research Committee. One of the committee’s assignments was to work on the development of synthetic rubber, since the importation of natural rubber through war zones seemed highly unlikely. Conant had worked on a synthetic rubber project with the E. I. Du Pont Company. In 1941, Conant succeeded Vannevar Bush as chair of the National Defense Research Committee.

The U.S. government had greater need for Conant’s scientific acumen, and he was appointed to the Military Policy Committee, which set the policy for the development of the atomic bomb. Bush, Karl T. Compton (brother of physicist Arthur Holly Compton), and Conant were often called “the grand dukes of the atomic bomb project.” In addition to his role as scientific adviser, Conant also was involved as a member of the Select Interim Committee in the selection of the target in Japan for the first bomb, which was dropped on Hiroshima, August 6, 1945. He defended America’s dropping of the bomb on the basis that the war did not appear to be coming to an end, and the planned invasion would take many more Japanese and American lives than a minimum of atom-bomb strikes forcing Japan to surrender.

Although he received an Atomic Pioneer Award in 1970 and was commended for his work in the development of peaceful uses of the atom, Conant never considered its peaceful use nearly as important as its destructive possibilities in war. Soon after the war, he traveled with Secretary of State James Byrnes to Moscow to talk with the Soviets and the British about the international control of the atomic bomb. He urged meetings between American and Soviet scientists but believed strongly that strict secrecy should be maintained by the Americans. He perceived that the Soviets were still five to fifteen years behind in developing an atomic weapon as long as they did not have access to American secrets.

In 1947, President Harry S. Truman appointed Conant as general adviser to the Atomic Energy Commission. Conant served on the committee until 1952 and stoutly defended J. Robert Oppenheimer against the accusations that he was influenced by pro-Soviet and anti-United States views.

In 1953, Conant resigned as Harvard’s president and was appointed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower as America’s high commissioner to Germany. While in the post, he had to deal with the stream of refugees coming into the American sectors from the Soviet sector and the rebuilding of a war-torn nation. He was also caught in the cross fire between communist rioters in East Germany and Senator Joseph McCarthy at home, who had accused him of not taking a firm enough hand against the Communists. President Eisenhower was satisfied with his conduct and appointed him America’s first ambassador to the newly created German Federal Republic in 1955, a post he held for nearly two years.

Conant had a keen interest in public education. Not even the best of the universities could preserve the Jeffersonian concept of an aristocracy of talent unless the public schools formed a durable foundation. In the late 1940’s, he warned against the dangers of divisiveness in nonpublic schools. His critics accused him of waging war against parochial schools. Although he saw a need for private schools, Conant was fearful of anything that weakened the support of public education and that consequently endangered the nation’s future.

After returning from Germany, Conant applied for and received a grant for $350,000 from the Carnegie Foundation to examine problems in the public schools. The Soviets had launched Sputnik, and this caused observers to compare the American and Soviet educational systems. It appeared that the United States was lagging in the scientific fields. The Carnegie grant enabled Conant to study American education and make recommendations for improvement. His guide for reform, published under the title The American High School Today (1959), contained the checklist simplicity of a maintenance manual that enabled educators to easily implement his ideas. He campaigned coast-to-coast for reforms, particularly school consolidations that would provide ample scientific facilities for both rural and urban students.

Conant also became aware of the number of black Americans who dropped out of school and created a high unemployment rate. His book Slums and Suburbs: A Commentary on Schools in Metropolitan Areas (1961) was prophetic of the urban riots of that decade.

Active until his last years, Conant suffered through a long illness. He died in a nursing home in Hanover, New Hampshire, on February 11, 1978.

Significance

Conant had many talents, as the title of his autobiography My Several Lives (1970) implies. Although highly intelligent, he never lived in an ivory tower but was always on the cutting edge of the great movements of his time. He represented a tradition of educational leaders who perceived that American education is holistic. Having made significant changes in the structure and program of one of America’s leading universities, he devoted his energies to the education of adolescents. He never forgot his own experiences as a young man and how essential it was for one to have a firm foundation before building for the future. He recognized the value of teachers as inspirers and allowed his own enthusiasm for teaching to become evident whether in a faculty meeting or a diplomatic discussion.

Conant was a prolific writer. He published twenty-two books ranging from science to politics, social problems, and education. He received honorary doctorates from many prestigious universities in the United States and Europe. He was appointed to important posts by four presidents, two Democrats and two Republicans. He was accorded high honors by political and military organizations, including Honorary Commander Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (1948), the Medal of Honor and Oak Leaf Cluster (1948), and the Great Living American Award in 1965.

Bibliography

Conant, James Bryant. The American High School Today: A First Report to Interest Citizens. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1959. Commonly called the Conant Report, the book made clear the changes that needed to be made in American secondary schools to keep pace with the times. Contains twenty-one recommendations, some of which were quite revolutionary. An excellent insight into Conant’s educational theories.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Germany and Freedom: A Personal Appraisal. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958. An insightful account of Conant’s attempts to create a better understanding between the United States and the Federal Republic of Germany. The book is based on the Godkin Lectures delivered at Harvard in 1958.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. My Several Lives: Memoirs of a Social Inventor. New York: Harper & Row, 1970. Conant’s autobiography, in which he gives intimate details of his election as Harvard’s twenty-third president, his work on the atomic bomb, and his confrontation with Senator Joseph McCarthy. Also included are some of his important addresses.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Scientific Principles and Moral Conduct. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967. Since Conant had worked on developing poison gas in World War I and the atomic bomb in World War II, he was aware of the moral implications involved in the application of science to war. Conant wrote as both a scientist and a concerned humanitarian.

Conant, Jennet. 109 East Palace: Robert Oppenheimer and the Secret City of Los Alamos. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005. Conant, the granddaughter of James Bryant Conant, describes what life was like for the scientists (and their families) who worked on the Manhattan Project. Includes information about Conant’s role in the project.

Douglass, Paul Franklin. Six upon the World: Toward an American Culture for the Industrial Age. Boston: Little, Brown, 1954. Conant is one of the six figures treated in this study (among the others are Walter Reuther and Francis Spellman), which presents his life and thought in overview. The book is marred by its boosterish approach to its subjects and to American culture in general. Includes bibliography.

Keller, Morton, and Phyllis Keller. Making Harvard Modern: The Rise of America’s University. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. This history of Harvard University begins with a section entitled “James Bryant Conant and the Meritocratic University,” in which the authors describe Conant’s academic policies at Harvard and his impact on American education.

“Obituary.” The New York Times, February 12, 1978. An excellent editorial on the many contributions of Conant, particularly in educational reforms.

Passow, A. Harry. American Secondary Education: The Conant Influence. Reston, Va.: National Association of Secondary School Principals, 1977. A perceptive look at Conant’s recommendations for junior and senior high schools and the impact these recommendations had ten and twenty years later.

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