James Conant
- Born: March 26, 1893 (Boston, Massachusetts)
- Died: Feburary 11, 1978 (Hanover, New Hampshire)
Education
- 1913: AB, Harvard University
- 1916: PhD, Harvard University (Chemistry)
Major Positions
- 1916–1929: Harvard University, Professor of Chemistry
- 1929–1933: Harvard University, Emory Professor of Organic Chemistry
- 1933–1953: Harvard University, President
- 1953–1978: Harvard University, Emeritus President
- 1955–1957: United States Department of State, United States Ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany
Other Positions
- 1941–1946: National Defense Research Committee, Chair
- 1946–1946: American Association for the Advancement of Science, President
Selected Part-Time Positions
- 1930–1949: Member, Board of Science Directors, Rockefeller Institute
- 1947–1952: Member, General Advisory Committee, United States Atomic Energy Commission
- 1950–1953: Member, National Science Board
Selected Awards and Honors
Archival Resources
Harvard University Archives, Pusey Library, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Online Finding Aid
Published Resources
Paul D. Bartlett, "James Bryant Conant: 1893-1978", Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences
Robert M. Weiss, The Conant Controversy in Teacher Education (New York: Random House, 1969)
James B. Conant, My Several Lives: Memoirs of a Social Inventor (New York: Harper and Row, 1970)
James Hershberg, James B. Conant: Harvard to Hiroshima and the Making of the Nuclear Age (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993)
James G. Hershberg, ""Over My Dead Body": James Bryant Conant and the Hydrogen Bomb," in Science, Technology, and the Military, ed. Everett Mendelsohn et al. (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic: 1988), 379-430
Barton J. Bernstein, "Seizing the Contested Terrain of Early Nuclear History: Stimson, Conant, and Their Allies Explain the Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb," Diplomatic History 17 (1993): 35-72
Martin Saltzman, "James Bryant Conant: The Making of an Iconoclast Chemist," Bulletin for the History of Chemistry 28 (2003): 84-94
