James Bryant Conant

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James Bryant Conant (1893-78), an American chemist, a changeful President of Harvard University, and the first president of the United States, was James Bryant Conant (March 26, 1893 to 1978). Ambassador of West Germany.

In 1916, Conant obtained a PhD in Chemistry from Harvard.

I spent my time in the United States Army researching poison gas development.

In 1919, he became an assistant professor of chemistry at Harvard and the Sheldon Emery Professor of Organic Chemistry in 1929.

He studied the physical properties of natural products, particularly chlorophyll, and was one of the first to investigate the sometimes complicated relationship between chemical equilibrium and chemical reactions.

He analyzed oxyhemoglobin, provided insight into the disease methemoglobinemia, helped to identify chlorophyll's composition, and provided important insights that informed modern theories of acid-base chemistry. Conant succeeded as President of Harvard University in 1933, with a reformed agenda that included dispensing with a variety of customs, such as class rankings and the requirement for Latin classes.

Early life

James Bryant Conant, the third child and only son of James Scott Conant, a photographer, and his wife Jennett Orr (née Bryant), was born in Dorchester, Massachusetts, on March 26, 1893. Conant was one of 35 students to take the Roxbury Latin School in West Roxbury in 1904. In 1910, he finished at the top of his class. Newton H. Black, his science teacher, welcomed him to Harvard College in September of that year, where he studied physical chemistry under Theodore W. Richards and organic chemistry under Elmer P. Kohler. He served as the editor of The Harvard Crimson. He joined the Signet Society and Delta Upsilon, and was initiated as a brother of Alpha Chi Sigma's Omicron chapter in 1912. In June 1913, he obtained his Bachelor of Arts degree from Phi Beta Kappa. He then began working on his doctorate, which was an unusual double dissertation. "The Electrochemical Behavior of Liquid Sodium Amalgams," Richards' first book "A Report of Certain Cyclopropane Derivatives" was the second, which Kohler supervised. In 1916, Conant received his Doctor of Philosophy degree from Harvard.

Conant formed the LPC Laboratories in 1915, following a business merger with two other Harvard chemistry graduates, Stanley Pennock and Chauncey Loomis. They opened a plant in Queens, New York, where they grew benzoic acid, which was used by the pharmaceutical industry. Roger Adams' departure in 1916 caused a Harvard vacancy that was not open to Conant. Conant accepted the invitation and returned to Harvard, having aspired to an academic career. An explosion killed Pennock and two others on November 27, 1916, destroying the plant completely. Conant's inconsistent laboratory methods may have played a role in Conant's faulty test results.

Conant was first lieutenant in the US Army Sanitary Corps on September 22, 1917, following the outbreak of war in Germany. He went to Camp American University, where he worked on poison gas development. Initially, his interest was concentrated on mustard gas, but Conant took responsibility of a unit that was struggling with the construction of lewisite in May 1918. On July 20, 1918, he was promoted to major. A pilot plant was established and then a full-scale production plant in Cleveland, but the war was over before lewisite could be used in combat.

In 1919, Conant was hired as an assistant professor of chemistry at MIT. Grace (Patty) Thayer Richards, Richards' daughter, became engaged to him the following year. They were married in Harvard's Appleton Chapel on April 17, 1920, and James Richards Conant died in May 1923, and Theodore Richards Conant was born in July 1928.

Later life

Conant returned to the United States in February 1957 and landed in New York's Upper East Side. The Carnegie Corporation of New York gave him over a million dollars to conduct educational studies between 1957 and 1965. He began The American High School Today, also known as the Conant Report, in 1959. This was a best seller, culminating in Conant's appearance on the front of Time magazine on September 14, 1959. Conant called for a variety of changes in it, including the consolidation of high schools into larger organizations that could offer a broader variety of curriculum choices. Despite being slammed by proponents of the American system, who wished for a European model of education, a wave of reforms have sprung throughout the region. His successors, Slums and Suburbs, in 1961, were much more controversial in terms of racial discrimination. Conant advised Americans "to accept de facto segregated schools" as impractical busing. This did not go over well with civil rights organizations, and Conant was eventually forced to admit that he had been wrong. Conant found a lot to be skeptical of teacher preparation in his book The Education of American Teachers in 1963. The most controversial part of the scheme was his defense of the fact that teachers were accredited by autonomous bodies rather than teacher training colleges.

On December 6, 1963, President Lyndon Johnson awarded Conant with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, a special award. He had been nominated for the award by President John F. Kennedy, but the ceremony had been postponed and continued after Kennedy's assassination in November 1963. The Atomic Energy Commission awarded Conant with the Atomic Pioneers Award in February 1970. Conant's other accolades during his career included being made a Commander of Légion d'honneur by France in 1936 and an Honorary Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1948, and he was named in the Federal Republic of Germany's Grand Cross in 1957. He was also awarded over 50 honorary degrees and was inducted into the Alpha Chi Sigma Hall of Fame in 2000.

My Several Lives is a film that chronicled Conant's illness from 1965 to 1969. In 1977, he became more infirm, and he had a string of strokes. On February 11, 1978, he died in a nursing home in Hanover, New Hampshire. In the Thayer-Richards family plot at Mount Auburn Cemetery, his body was cremated and his ashes were interred. He was supported by his wife and sons. His papers are in the Harvard University Archives. Among them was a sealed brown Manila envelope that Conant had given the archives in 1951 with the instructions that it should be opened by the President of Harvard in the 21st century. It was opened by Harvard's 28th president, Drew Faust, in 2007, in which Conant expressed his hopes and fears for the future. "You will... be in charge of a more thriving and influential institution than the one over which I have the honor to preside," he wrote. "I'm confident that [Harvard] will keep the academic freedom's traditions of tolerance for Heresy."

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