James B. Conant | |
|---|---|
 Conant in 1932 | |
| 1stUnited States Ambassador toWest Germany | |
| In office May 14, 1955 – February 19, 1957 | |
| President | Dwight D. Eisenhower |
| Preceded by | Leland B. Morris (aschargé d'affaires, 1941) |
| Succeeded by | David K. E. Bruce |
| 23rdPresident of Harvard University | |
| In office October 9, 1933 – 1953 | |
| Preceded by | Abbott Lawrence Lowell |
| Succeeded by | Nathan Marsh Pusey |
| Personal details | |
| Born | James Bryant Conant (1893-03-26)March 26, 1893 |
| Died | February 11, 1978(1978-02-11) (aged 84) Hanover, New Hampshire, U.S. |
| Spouse | |
| Relations | Conant family |
| Children | 2 |
| Education | Harvard University (AB,PhD) |
| Awards | 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) HonoraryCommander of the Order of the British Empire (1948) Grand Cross of theOrder 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] |
| Signature |  |
| Military service | |
| Allegiance | United States |
| Branch/service | Chemical Warfare Service |
| Years of service | 1917–1919 |
| Rank | Major |
| Battles/wars | World War I |
James Bryant Conant (March 26, 1893 – February 11, 1978) was an Americanchemist, aPresident of Harvard University, and the firstU.S. Ambassador to West Germany.
DuringWorld War I, he served in theU.S. Army, where he worked on the development ofpoison gases, especiallylewisite. 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 ofnatural products, particularlychlorophyll, and he was one of the first to explore the sometimes complex relationship betweenchemical equilibrium and thereaction rate of chemical processes. He studied thebiochemistry ofoxyhemoglobin providing insight into the diseasemethemoglobinemia, helped to explain the structure ofchlorophyll, and contributed important insights that underlie modern theories ofacid-base chemistry.
In 1933, Conant became the president of Harvard University with a reformist agenda that included dispensing with a number of customs, including class rankings and the requirement for Latin classes. He abolishedathletic 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 theScholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) and co-educational classes. During his presidency, women were admitted toHarvard Medical School andHarvard Law School for the first time.
Conant was appointed to theNational 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 theManhattan Project, which developed the firstatomic bombs. On July 16, 1945, he was among the dignitaries present at theAlamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range for theTrinity nuclear test, the first detonation of an atomic bomb, and was part of theInterim Committee that advised PresidentHarry 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 theAtomic Energy Commission (AEC); in the latter capacity he advised the president against starting a development program for thehydrogen bomb.
In his later years at Harvard, Conant taught undergraduate courses on thehistory and philosophy of science, and wrote books explaining thescientific method to laymen. In 1953, he retired as president of Harvard University and became theUnited States High Commissioner for Germany, overseeing the restoration of German sovereignty afterWorld War II, and then was Ambassador to West Germany until 1957. On returning to the United States, Conant criticized the education system inThe American High School Today (1959),Slums and Suburbs (1961), andThe Education of American Teachers (1963). Between 1965 and 1969, Conant authored his autobiography,My Several Lives (1970). He became increasingly infirm, had a series ofstrokes in 1977, and died in a nursing home inHanover, New Hampshire, the following year.
Conant was born inDorchester, Massachusetts, on March 26, 1893, the third child and only son of James Scott Conant, aphotoengraver, and his wife Jennett Orr (née Bryant).[2] In 1904, Conant was one of 35 boys who passed the competitive admission exam for theRoxbury Latin School inWest 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 enteredHarvard College,[4] where he studiedphysical chemistry underTheodore W. Richards andorganic chemistry underElmer P. Kohler. He was also an editor ofThe Harvard Crimson. He joined theSignet Society andDelta Upsilon,[5] and was initiated as a brother of the Omicron chapter ofAlpha Chi Sigma in 1912.[6] He graduatedPhi Beta Kappa with hisBachelor 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 CertainCyclopropane Derivatives".[7] Harvard awarded Conant hisDoctor of Philosophy degree in 1916.[8]
In 1915, Conant entered into a business partnership with two other Harvard chemistry graduates,Stanley Pennock and Chauncey Loomis, to form the LPC Laboratories. They opened a plant in a one-story building inQueens, New York City, where they manufactured chemicals used by the pharmaceutical industry likebenzoic acid that were selling at high prices on account of the interruption of imports from Germany due toWorld War I. In 1916, the departure of organic chemistRoger Adams created a vacancy at Harvard that was offered to Conant. Since he aspired to an academic career, Conant accepted the offer and returned to Harvard. On November 27, 1916, an explosion killed Pennock and two others and completely destroyed a subsequent and newly opened plant in Newark, New Jersey. A contributing cause was Conant's faulty test procedures.[9][10]
Following theUnited States declaration of war on Germany that launched U.S. involvement inWorld War I, Conant was commissioned as asecond lieutenant in theU.S. Army Sanitary Corps on September 22, 1917. He went to theCamp American University, where he worked on the development ofpoison gases. Initially, his work concentrated onmustard gas, but in May 1918, Conant took charge of a unit concerned with the development oflewisite. He was promoted tomajor on July 20, 1918. A pilot plant was built, and then a full-scale production plant inCleveland, but the war ended before lewisite could be used in battle.[11]
Conant was appointed an assistant professor of chemistry at Harvard in 1919. The following year he became engaged to Richards's daughter, Grace (Patty) Thayer Richards. They were married in theAppleton Chapel at Harvard on April 17, 1920, and had two sons, James Richards Conant, born in May 1923, and Theodore Richards Conant, born in July 1928.[12]
Conant became an associate professor in 1924.[13][14] In 1925, he visited Germany, then the heart of chemical research,[15] for eight months. He toured the major universities and laboratories there and met many of the leading chemists, includingTheodor Curtius,Kazimierz Fajans,Hans Fischer,Arthur Hantzsch,Hans Meerwein,Jakob Meisenheimer,Hermann Staudinger,Adolf Windaus andKarl Ziegler. After Conant returned to the United States,Arthur Amos Noyes made him an attractive offer to move toCaltech. The president of Harvard,Abbott Lawrence Lowell, made a counter offer: immediate promotion to professor, effective September 1, 1927, with a salary of $7,000 (roughly equivalent toUS$126,711 as of 2024[16]) and a grant of $9,000 per annum for research. Conant accepted and stayed at Harvard.[17] In 1929, he became the Sheldon Emery Professor of Organic Chemistry, and then, in 1931, the chairman of the chemistry department.[13]
Between 1928 and 1933, Conant published 55 papers.[17] Much of his research, like his double thesis, combinednatural product chemistry withphysical organic chemistry. Based on his exploration ofreaction rates inchemical equilibria, Conant was one of the first to recognise that thekinetics of these systems is sometimes straightforward and simple, yet quite complex in other cases.[18] Conant studied the effect ofhaloalkane structure on the rate ofsubstitution with inorganiciodidesalts[19] which, together with earlier work,[20] led to what is now known as either the Conant-Finkelstein reaction or more commonly simply theFinkelstein reaction.[21] A recent application of this reaction involved the preparation of an iodinatedpolyvinyl chloride from regular PVC.[22] A combination of Conant's work on the kinetics ofhydrogenation andGeorge Kistiakowsky's work on theenthalpy changes of these reactions[23] supported the later development of the theory ofhyperconjugation.[24]
Conant's investigations helped in the development of a more comprehensive understanding of the nature of acids and bases.[25] He investigated the properties of certainacids which were many timesstronger thanmineral acid solutions in water. Conant christened them "superacids"[26] and laid the foundation for the development of theHammett acidity function.[27] These investigations usedacetic acid as thesolvent and demonstrated thatsodium acetate behaves as abase under these conditions.[28][29] This observation is consistent withBrønsted–Lowry acid–base theory published in 1923,[30] but cannot be explained under olderArrhenius theory approaches. Later work with George Wheland[31] and extended by William Kirk McEwen[32] looked at the properties ofhydrocarbons as very weak acids, includingacetophenone,phenylacetylene,fluorene anddiphenylmethane. Conant can be considered alongsideBrønsted,Lowry,Lewis, andHammett as a developer of modern understanding of acids and bases.[33]
Between 1929 and his retirement from chemical research in 1933,[34] Conant published papers inScience,[35][36]Nature,[37] and theJournal of the American Chemical Society aboutchlorophyll and its structure.[38][24] Though the complete structure eluded him, his work did support and contribute toNobel laureateHans Fischer's ultimate determination of the structure in 1939.[39] Conant's work on chlorophyll was recognised when he was inducted as a foreignFellow of the Royal Society[1] on May 2, 1941.[40] He also published three papers describing thepolymerisation ofisoprene to preparesynthetic rubber.[18]
Another line of research involved thebiochemistry of thehemoglobin-oxyhemoglobin system.[18] Conant ran a series of experiments withelectrochemical oxidation and reduction, following in the footsteps of the famous German chemist and Nobel laureateFritz Haber.[41] He determined that theiron centre inmethemoglobin is aferric (FeIII) centre, unlike theferrous (FeII) centre found in normal hemoglobin,[42][43] and this difference inoxidation state is the cause ofmethemoglobinemia, a medical condition which causestissue hypoxia.[44]
Conant wrote a chemistry textbook with his former science teacher Black, entitledPractical Chemistry, which was published in 1920, with a revised edition in 1929. This was superseded in 1937 by theirNew Practical Chemistry, which in turn had a revised edition in 1946.[45] The text proved a popular one; it was adopted by 75 universities, and Conant received thousands of dollars inroyalties.[46] For his accomplishments in chemistry, he was awarded theAmerican Chemical Society's Nichols Medal in 1932,[46]Columbia University's Chandler Medal in 1932,[47] and the American Chemical Society's highest honor, thePriestley Medal, in 1944.[48] He also received the society'sCharles Lathrop Parsons Award in 1955, for public service.[49] He was elected a Fellow of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1924,[50] a Member of theNational Academy of Sciences in 1929,[13] and a Member of theAmerican Philosophical Society in 1935.[51] Notable students of Conant's includedPaul Doughty Bartlett, George Wheland, andFrank Westheimer.[17] In 1932 he was also honored by membership of theGerman Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.[52]
After some months of lobbying and discussion, Harvard's ruling body, theHarvard Corporation, announced on May 8, 1933, that it had elected Conant as the next President of Harvard.[53]Alfred North Whitehead, Harvard's eminent professor of philosophy disagreed with the decision, declaring, "The Corporation should not have elected a chemist to the Presidency." "But," Corporation memberGrenville Clark reminded him, "Eliot was a chemist, and our best president too." "I know," replied Whitehead, "but Eliot was abad chemist."[54] Clark was very much responsible for Conant's election.[55]
On October 9, 1933, Conant became thePresident of Harvard University with a low-key installation ceremony in the Faculty Room ofUniversity Hall.[56][57] This set the tone for Conant's presidency as one of informality and reform. At his inauguration, he accepted the charter and seal presented toJohn Leverett the Younger in 1707, but dropped a number of other customs, including the singing ofGloria Patri and the Latin Oration.[58] While, unlike some other universities, Harvard did not require Greek or Latin for entrance, they were worth double credits towards admission, and students like Conant who had studied Latin were awarded anA.B. degree while those who had not, received anS.B. One of his first efforts at reform was to attempt to abolish this distinction.[59] But in 1937 he wrote:
I do not see how one can make very much headway as a student ... of history and literature without a reading knowledge of Latin. I do not see how a person can go very far in any branch of science without a thorough understanding of mathematics, and if the underpinning was bad in school, probably the necessarycalculus and so forth would not have been taken during the college years. I know that a man cannot be a research chemist without a reading knowledge of German. It is hard to acquire it as the first language in college.[60]
As a first step to improving the faculty, Conant established a mandatory retirement age of sixty-six, with exceptional faculty members able to remain until age seventy-six. The latter affected two of the university's most eminent scholars,Frank Taussig andGeorge Kittredge, who were persuaded to retire voluntarily rather than under the new rule.[61] His longest and most bitter battle was overtenure reform, shifting to an "up or out" policy, under which scholars who were not promoted were terminated. A small number of extra-departmental positions was set aside for outstanding scholars.[62] This policy led junior faculty to revolt, and nearly resulted in Conant's dismissal in 1938.[63] Conant was fond of saying: "Behold the turtle. It makes progress only when it sticks its neck out."[64]
Other reforms included the abolition of class rankings andathletic scholarships.[62] Conant added new graduate degrees in education, history of science and public policy,[65] and he introduced theNieman Fellowship for journalists to study at Harvard,[66] the first of which was awarded in 1939.[67] He supported the "meatballs", aslower class students were called.[68] He instituted the Harvard national scholarships for underprivileged students.[56]Dudley House was opened to provide non-resident students with increased opportunities for socialization (opportunities provided to resident undergraduates by thetwelve Harvard College residential houses).[68]
Conant asked two of his assistant deans,Henry Chauncey and William Bender, to determine whether theScholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) was a good measure of academic potential. When they reported that it was, Conant adopted it.[69] He waged a ten-year campaign for the consolidation of testing services, which resulted in the creation of theEducational Testing Service in 1946, with Chauncey as its director.[70]Theodore H. White, a Boston Jewish "meatball" who received a personal letter of introduction from Conant so that he could report on theChinese Civil War, noted that "Conant was the first president to recognize that meatballs were Harvard men too."[68]Lowell, Conant's predecessor, had imposed a 15 percent quota on Jewish students in 1922, something Conant had voted to support.[71]
This quota was replaced with geographic distribution preferences, which had the same effect of limiting Jewish admission.[72][73] Conant's cool response to the plight of the Jewish academic refugees from Hitler suggests that he shared theanti-semitism common to his social group and time.[74] WhenDuPont asked him for an appraisal of the German chemistMax Bergmann, Conant wrote back that Bergmann was "definitely of the Jewish type—rather heavy" with "none of the earmarks of genius".[75][76] Harvard awarded honorary degrees to two notable displaced scholars,Thomas Mann andAlbert Einstein, in 1935,[77] but Conant declined to participate in the Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced German Scholars.[78] His vision of building Harvard's faculty involved hiring promising American scholars rather than helping refugees. The two most prominent refugee scholars at Harvard,Walter Gropius and Robert Ulich, were not Jewish.[79] Writing in 1979, historianWilliam M. Tuttle Jr. concluded that "Conant's position reflected not only a failure of foresight, but also a failure of compassion and political sensitivity",[80] but added that "Conant was one of the more outspoken anti-Nazis in the United States from 1933 to the outbreak of war in Europe in 1939.[81]Stephen H. Norwood, writing in 2004, observed that "This, however, was hardly the case."[82] Norwood noted that while Conant was not an apologist for the Nazi regime, he repeatedly failed to speak out.[83]
In 1934, Harvard-educated German businessmanErnst Hanfstaengl attended the 25th anniversary reunion of his class of 1909, and gave a number of speeches.[84] In his inauguralcommencement address in 1934, Conant spoke out against the Nazi threat toacademic freedom in Germany. His speech was interrupted by two female students who had chained themselves to the stands near the speaker's platform and chanted "Down with Hitler!" and "Down with Hanfstaengl!"[85] Hanfstaengl wrote out a check for 2,500 ℛ︁ℳ︁ (equivalent to $250,000 in 2024) to Conant for a scholarship to enable an outstanding Harvard student to study for a year in Germany.[86][87] At the next meeting of the Corporation in October, Conant persuaded it to reject the offer due to Hanfstaengl's Nazi associations.[88] When the issue of Hanfstaengl's scholarship came up again in 1936, Conant turned the money down a second time.[89] Hanfstaengl's presence on campus prompted a series of anti-Nazi demonstrations, in which a number of Harvard andMIT students were arrested. Conant made a personal plea for clemency that resulted in two women being acquitted, but six men and a woman were sentenced to six months in jail.[90] They were later pardoned by theGovernor of Massachusetts,Joseph B. Ely.[91]
When theUniversity of Berlin awarded anhonorary degree in 1934 to American legal scholar and Dean of Harvard Law SchoolRoscoe Pound, who had toured Germany earlier that year and made no secret of his admiration for the Nazi regime,[92] Conant refused to order Pound not to accept it, and attended the informal award ceremony at Harvard where Pound was presented with the degree byHans Luther, the German ambassador to the United States.[93][94]
What Conant feared most was disruption to Harvard's tercentennial celebrations in 1936, but there was no trouble despite the presence ofFranklin D. Roosevelt, thePresident of the United States, and a Harvard graduate of the class of 1904, whom many fellow Harvard graduates regarded as asocialist and aclass traitor.[95][96] Privately, Conant approved of theNew Deal and expressed admiration for Roosevelt's goals. He invited Roosevelt to speak at the tercentennial celebrations.[96] This did not sit well with Lowell, and it was only with difficulty that Lowell was persuaded to be presiding officer at an event at which Roosevelt spoke.[97] The parallels between Roosevelt's New Deal and Conant's advocacy of meritocracy and of education as a means of social mobility did not escape notice.[98][99] Conant recognized that education in America contributed to social stratification rather than breaking it down, and that educational opportunity needed to be extended to areas where it was deficient, such as rural areas, small towns and inner cities. He advocated for federal interventions, since these areas were often poor and lacking in the funds needed to improve education, and that they were economically and socially stratified with political and taxation structures that reinforced social stratification.[100]
Conant sought to enhance theliberal education of Harvard students. He toyed with the notion of requiring PhD candidates to study an area outside their speciality.[101] One obstacle was the organization of faculty into specialized departments that had little contact with each other.[102] In 1935, he attempted to break down the specialization of academic by creating non-departmental university professorships for scholars whose research crossed the boundaries of multiple disciplines.[103][104] Undergraduates were required to take general education courses, of which a proportion had to be outside their area of concentration. He took a particular interest in establishing a history of science graduate program and a history of science course for nonscientists.[105]
Although he had no daughters and little interest in the education of women, the exigencies ofWorld War II meant reduced numbers of male students, and this propelled Conant in that direction. In June 1943, he concluded an agreement withRadcliffe College, the women's college associated with Harvard, for Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences to assume responsibility for the instruction of Radcliffe students. Initially there were separate but identical undergraduate courses for Harvard and Radcliffe students, but this gave way to coeducational classes.[106][62] It was during his presidency that the first class of women were admitted toHarvard Medical School in 1945, andHarvard Law School in 1950.[107]
In June 1940, withWorld War II already raging in Europe,Vannevar Bush, the director of theCarnegie Institution of Washington, recruited Conant to theNational Defense Research Committee (NDRC),[108] although he remained president of Harvard.[109] Bush envisaged the NDRC as bringing scientists together to "conduct research for the creation and improvement of instrumentalities, methods and materials of warfare."[110] Although the United States had not yet entered the war, Conant was not alone in his conviction thatNazi Germany had to be stopped, and that the United States would inevitably become embroiled in the conflict. The immediate task, as Conant saw it, was therefore to organize American science for war.[108] He became head of the NDRC's Division B, the division responsible for bombs, fuels, gases and chemicals.[111] On June 28, 1941, Roosevelt signed Executive Order 8807, which created theOffice of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD),[112] with Bush as its director. Conant succeeded Bush as chairman of the NDRC, which was subsumed into the OSRD.Roger Adams, a contemporary of Conant's at Harvard in the 1910s, succeeded him as head of Division B.[113] Conant became the driving force of the NDRC on personnel and policy matters.[114] The NDRC would work hand in hand with the Army and Navy's research efforts, supplementing rather than supplanting them.[110] It was specifically charged with investigatingnuclear fission.[115]
In February 1941, Roosevelt sent Conant to Britain as head of a mission that also includedFrederick L. Hovde fromPurdue University andCarroll L. Wilson from MIT, to evaluate the research being carried out there and the prospects for cooperation.[116] The 1940Tizard Mission had revealed that American technology was some years behind that of Britain in many fields, most notablyradar, and cooperation was eagerly sought. Conant had lunch with Prime MinisterWinston Churchill andFrederick Lindemann, his leading scientific adviser, and an audience withKing George VI atBuckingham Palace. At a subsequent meeting, Lindemann told Conant about British progress towards developing anatomic bomb. What most impressed Conant was the British conviction that it was feasible.[117] That the British program was ahead of the American one raised the possibility in Conant's mind that theGerman nuclear energy project might be even further ahead, as Germany was generally acknowledged to be a world leader in nuclear physics.[118] Later that year, Churchill, as Chancellor of theUniversity of Bristol, conferred an honoraryDoctor of Laws degree on Conantin absentia.[119][120]
Conant subsequently moved to restrict cooperation with Britain on nuclear energy, particularly its post-war aspects, and became involved in heated negotiations withWallace Akers, the representative ofTube Alloys, the British atomic project.[121] Conant's tough stance, under which the British were excluded except where their assistance was vital, resulted in British retaliation, and a complete breakdown of cooperation.[122] His objections were swept aside by Roosevelt, who brokered the 1943Quebec Agreement with Churchill, that restored full cooperation.[123] After theQuebec Conference, Churchill visited Conant at Harvard, where Conant returned the 1941 gesture and presented Churchill with an honorary Doctor of Laws degree.[124] After the United States entered the war in December 1941, the OSRD handed the atomic bomb project, better known as theManhattan Project,[125] over to the Army, with Brigadier GeneralLeslie R. Groves as project director. A meeting that included Conant decided Groves should be answerable to a small committee called the Military Policy Committee, chaired by Bush, with Conant as his alternate. Thus, Conant remained involved in the administration of the Manhattan Project at its highest levels.[126]
In August 1942, Roosevelt appointed Conant to the Rubber Survey Committee. Chaired byBernard M. Baruch, a trusted adviser and confidant of Roosevelt, the committee was tasked with reviewing the synthetic rubber program.[127] Corporations usedpatent laws to restrict competition and stifle innovation.[128] When theJapanese occupation of Malaya, North Borneo and Sarawak, followed by theJapanese occupation of the Dutch East Indies, cut off 90 percent of the supply of natural rubber,[127] the rubber shortage became a national scandal,[129] and the development of synthetic substitutes, an urgent priority.[127] Baruch dealt with the difficult political issues;[130] Conant concerned himself with the technical ones. There were a number of different synthetic rubber products to choose from. In addition toDuPont'sneoprene,Standard Oil had licensed German patents for acopolymer calledBuna-N and a related product,Buna-S. None had been manufactured on the scale now required, and there was pressure from agricultural interests to choose a process which involved making raw materials from farm products.[131] The Rubber Survey Committee made a series of recommendations, including the appointment of a rubber director, and the construction and operation of 51 factories to supply the materials needed for synthetic rubber production.[127] Technical problems dogged the program through 1943, but by late 1944 plants were in operation with an annual capacity of over a million tons, most of which was Buna-S.[132]
In May 1945, Conant became part of theInterim Committee that was formed to advise the new president,Harry S. Truman on nuclear weapons.[133] The Interim Committee decided that the atomic bomb should be used against an industrial target in Japan as soon as possible and without warning.[134] On July 16, 1945, Conant was among the dignitaries present at theAlamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range for theTrinity nuclear test, the first detonation of an atomic bomb.[135] After the war, Conant became concerned about growing criticism in the United States of thebombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by figures likeNorman Cousins andReinhold Niebuhr. He played an important behind-the-scenes role in shaping public opinion by instigating and then editing an influential February 1947Harper's article entitled "The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb". Written by former Secretary of WarHenry L. Stimson with the help ofMcGeorge Bundy,[136] the article stressed that the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were used to avoid the possibility of "over a million casualties",[137] from a figure found in the estimates given to theJoint Chiefs of Staff by its Joint Planning Staff in 1945.[138]
TheAtomic Energy Act of 1946 replaced the wartimeManhattan Project with theAtomic Energy Commission (AEC) on January 1, 1947. The Act also established the General Advisory Committee (GAC) within the AEC to provide it with scientific and technical advice. It was widely expected that Conant would chair the GAC, but the position went toRobert Oppenheimer, the wartime director of theLos Alamos National Laboratory that had designed and developed the first atomic bombs. At the same time, the Joint Research and Development Board (JRDC) was established to coordinate defense research, and Bush asked Conant to head its atomic energy subcommittee, on which Oppenheimer also served.[139] When the new AEC chairmanDavid E. Lilienthal raised security concerns about Oppenheimer's relationships withcommunists, including Oppenheimer's brotherFrank Oppenheimer, his wife Kitty and his former girlfriendJean Tatlock, Bush and Conant reassured Lilienthal that they had known about it when they had placed Oppenheimer in charge at Los Alamos in 1942. With such expressions of support, AEC issued Oppenheimer aQ clearance, granting him access to atomic secrets.[140]
By September 1948, theRed Scare began to take hold, and Conant called for a ban on hiring teachers who were communists, although not for the dismissal of those who had already been hired. A debate ensued over whether communist educators could teach apolitical subjects.[141] Conant was a member of the Educational Policies Commission (EPC), a body to which he had been appointed in 1941.[142] When it next met in March 1949, Conant's push for a ban was supported by the president of Columbia University,General of the ArmyDwight D. Eisenhower. The two found common ground in their belief in ideology-based education,[143] which Conant called "democratic education". He did not see public education as a side effect of American democracy, but as one of its principal driving forces,[144] and he disapproved of the public funding ofdenominational schools that he observed in Australia during his visit there in 1951.[145] He called for increased federal spending on education, and higher taxes to redistribute wealth.[144] His thinking was outlined in his booksEducation in a Divided World in 1948,[146] andEducation and Liberty in 1951.[147] In 1952, he went further and endorsed the dismissal of academics who invoked theFifth under questioning by theHouse Un-American Activities Committee.[148]
A sign of Conant's declining influence occurred in 1950, when he was passed over for the post of President of the National Academy of Sciences in favor ofDetlev Bronk, the president ofJohns Hopkins University, after a "revolt" by scientists unhappy with Conant.[149] The GAC was enormously influential throughout the late 1940s, but the opposition of Oppenheimer and Conant to the development of thehydrogen bomb, only to be overridden by Truman in 1950, diminished its stature.[150] It was reduced further when Oppenheimer and Conant were not reappointed when their terms expired in 1952, depriving the GAC of its two best-known members.[151] Conant was appointed to the National Science Board, which administered the newNational Science Foundation, and was elected its chairman, but this body had little financial or political clout.[152] In April 1951, Truman appointed Conant to theScience Advisory Committee, but it would not develop into an influential body until the Eisenhower administration.[153]
Conant's experience with the Manhattan Project convinced him that the public needed a better understanding of science, and he moved to expand the nascenthistory and philosophy of science program at Harvard. He took the lead personally by teaching a new undergraduate course, Natural Science 4, "On Understanding Science". His course notes became the basis for a book of the same name, published in 1948.[154] In 1952, he began teaching another undergraduate course, Philosophy 150, "A Philosophy of Science".[155] In his teachings and writing on the philosophy of science, he drew heavily on those of his Harvard colleagueWillard Van Orman Quine.[156] Conant contributed four chapters to the 1957Harvard Case Histories in Experimental Science, including an account of the overthrow of thephlogiston theory.[154] In 1951, he publishedScience and Common Sense, in which he attempted to explain the ways of scientists to laymen.[157] Conant's ideas about scientific progress would come under attack by his own protégés, notablyThomas Kuhn inThe Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Conant commented on Kuhn's manuscript in draft form.[154]
In April 1951, Conant was approached byU.S. Secretary of StateDean Acheson about replacingJohn J. McCloy asUnited States High Commissioner for Germany, but he declined. However, afterDwight Eisenhower was elected president in 1952, Conant was again offered the job by the new Secretary of State,John Foster Dulles, and this time he accepted. At theHarvard Board of Overseers meeting on January 12, 1952, Conant announced that he would retire in September 1953 after twenty years at Harvard, having reached the pension age of sixty.[158][159]
In Germany, there were major issues to be decided. Germany was still occupied by the Soviet Union, the United States, Great Britain and France. Dealing with the wartime allies was a major task for the high commissioner. West Germany, made up of the zones occupied by the three western powers, had been granted control of its own affairs, except for defense and foreign policy, in 1949. While most Germans wanted a neutral and reunited Germany, the Eisenhower administration sought to reduce its defense spending by rearming Germany and replacing American troops with Germans. Meanwhile, the House Un-American Activities Committee slammed Conant's staff as communist sympathizers and called for books by communist authors held inUnited States Information Agency (USIA) libraries in Germany to be burned.[160]
The first crisis to occur on Conant's watch was theuprising of 1953 in East Germany. This brought the reunification issue to the fore.Konrad Adenauer's deft handling of the issue enabled him to handily win re-election asChancellor of West Germany in September, but this also strengthened his hand in negotiations with Conant. Adenauer did not want his country to become a bargaining chip between the United States and the Soviet Union, nor did he want it to become a nuclear battlefield, a prospect raised by the arrival of American tactical nuclear weapons in 1953 as part of the Eisenhower administration'sNew Look policy.[161] Conant lobbied for theEuropean Defense Community, which would have established apan-European military. This seemed to be the only way that German rearmament would be accepted, but opposition from France killed the plan. In what Conant considered a minor miracle, France's actions cleared the way for West Germany to become part ofNATO with its own army.[162]
At noon on May 6, 1955, Conant, along with the high commissioners from Britain and France, signed the documents ending Allied control of West Germany, admitting it to NATO, and allowing it to rearm. The office of the United States High Commissioner was abolished and Conant became instead the firstUnited States Ambassador to West Germany.[163] His role was now to encourage West Germany to build up its forces, while reassuring the Germans that doing so would not result in a United States withdrawal.[164] Being fluent in German, Conant was able to give speeches to German audiences. He paid numerous visits to German educational and scientific organizations.[165]
While high commissioner, Conant approved the release of many major and other German war criminals after serving only a fraction of their sentences, against protests from American political leaders and veterans' organizations (some of those sentenced had murdered American prisoners), accusing him of "moral amnesia". Such criticism continued when as ambassador he supported the West German government's leniency toward former Nazis.[166]
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Conant returned to the United States in February 1957, where he leased an apartment on theUpper East Side inNew York City.[168]
Between 1957 and 1965, theCarnegie Corporation of New York gave him over a million dollars to write studies of education.[169] In 1959 he publishedThe American High School Today, better known as the Conant Report. This became a best seller, resulting in Conant's appearance on the cover ofTime magazine on September 14, 1959.[170][171] In it, Conant called for a number of reforms, including the consolidation of high schools into larger bodies that could offer a broader range of curriculum choices. Although it was slammed by critics of the American system, who hoped for a system of education based on the European model, it did lead to a wave of reforms across the country.[172]
His subsequentSlums and Suburbs in 1961 was far more controversial in its treatment of racial issues. Regardingbusing as impractical, Conant urged Americans "to acceptde facto segregated schools".[173][174] This did not go over well with civil rights groups, and by 1964 Conant was forced to admit that he had been wrong.[173] InThe Education of American Teachers in 1963, Conant found much to criticize about the training of teachers. Most controversial was his defense of the arrangement by which teachers were certified by independent bodies rather than the teacher training colleges.[172]
On December 6, 1963, PresidentLyndon Johnson presented Conant with thePresidential Medal of Freedom, with special distinction. He was selected for the award by PresidentJohn F. Kennedy, but the ceremony was delayed prior toKennedy's assassination.[175]
In February 1970, PresidentRichard Nixon presented Conant with the Atomic Pioneers Award from the Atomic Energy Commission.[176] Other awards that Conant received during his long career included being made a Commander ofLégion d'honneur by France in 1936 and an HonoraryCommander of the Order of the British Empire by Britain in 1948, and he was awarded the Grand Cross of theOrder of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1957. He was also awarded over 50 honorary degrees,[177] and was posthumously inducted into the Alpha Chi Sigma Hall of Fame in 2000.[6]
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 ofstrokes in 1977.[179] He died in a nursing home inHanover, New Hampshire, on February 11, 1978.[180] His body was cremated and his ashes interred in the Thayer-Richards family plot atMount 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]
Conant is the namesake ofJames B. Conant High School inHoffman Estates, Illinois,[183] and James B. Conant Elementary School inBloomfield Hills, Michigan.[184]
Former graduate students of Conant include:
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| Academic offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | 23rd President of Harvard University 1933–1953 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science 1945 | Succeeded by |
| Government offices | ||
| Preceded by | Chairman, National Defense Research Committee 1941–1947 | Extinct |
| Diplomatic posts | ||
| Preceded by | American High Commissioner for Occupied Germany 1953–1955 | Extinct |
| Preceded by Leland B. Morris (aschargé d'affaires in 1941) | United States Ambassador to Germany 1955–1957 | Succeeded by |
| Awards | ||
| Preceded by | Sylvanus Thayer Award recipient 1965 | Succeeded by |
| Minister Plenipotentiary |  | |
|---|---|---|
| Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary | ||
| Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary | ||
| International | |
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