James B. Conant

James Bryant Conant
James Bryant Conant in 1948
1st United States Ambassador to West Germany
In office May 14, 1955 – February 19, 1957
President	Dwight D. Eisenhower
Succeeded by	David K. E. Bruce
23rd President of Harvard University
In office 1933–1953
President	Harry S Truman
Preceded by	Abbott Lawrence Lowell
Succeeded by	Nathan Marsh Pusey
Personal details
Born	(1893-03-26)March 26, 1893 Dorchester, Massachusetts
Died	February 11, 1978(1978-02-11) (aged 84) Hanover, New Hampshire
Relations	Jennet Conant (granddaughter)
Awards	Medal for Merit Medal of Freedom Commandeur, Legion d'Honneur (France) Commander of the Order of the British Empire (Great Britain) Grand Cross, Order of Merit (Germany) (more, see below)
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 a chemist, a transformative President of Harvard University, and the first U.S. Ambassador to West Germany. Graduating from Harvard with a Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1916, Conant served in the U.S. Army during World War I, working on the development of poison gases. He became an assistant professor of chemistry at Harvard on September 1, 1919, and the Sheldon Emery Professor of Organic Chemistry in 1929. He was one of the first to explore the sometimes complex relationship between the chemical equilibrium and the reaction rate of chemical processes. He investigated the biochemistry of oxyhemoglobin, and published three papers on using polymerized isoprene to create synthetic rubber.

In 1933, Conant became the President of Harvard University. He dispensed with a number of customs, including class rankings and the requirement for Latin classes, and abolished athletic scholarships. He instituted an "up or out" policy, under which scholars who were not promoted were terminated. His egalitarian vision of education diversified the student body. He promoted the adoption of the Scholastic Aptitude Test and co-educational classes. During his presidency, women were admitted to Harvard Medical School and Harvard Law School for the first time.

Conant was appointed to the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC) in 1940, becoming its chairman in 1941. He oversaw vital wartime research projects, including the development of synthetic rubber, and the Manhattan Project, which developed the first atomic bombs. On July 16, 1945, he was among the dignitaries present at the Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range for the Trinity nuclear test, the first detonation of an atomic bomb, and was part of the Interim Committee that advised President Harry 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 the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). He taught undergraduate courses at Harvard on the history and philosophy of science, and wrote books explaining the scientific method to laymen. In 1953 he retired as President of Harvard and became the United States High Commissioner for Germany, overseeing the restoration of German sovereignty, and then was Ambassador to West Germany until 1957.

Early life

James Bryant Conant was born in Dorchester, Massachusetts, on March 26, 1893, the third child and only son of James Scott Conant, a photoengraver, and his wife Jennett Orr née Bryant. Conant was one of 35 boys who passed the competitive admission exam for the Roxbury Latin School in West Roxbury in 1904. He graduated near the top of his class in 1910. Encouraged by his science teacher, Newton H. Black, in September of that year he entered Harvard, where he studied physical chemistry under Theodore W. Richards and organic chemistry under Elmer P. Kohler. He was also an editor of The Harvard Crimson, and joined the Signet Society and Delta Upsilon. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa with his Bachelor of Arts in June 1913. 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 Certain Cyclopropane Derivatives". Harvard awarded Conant his Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1916.

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 in Queens, New York, where they manufactured chemicals used by the pharmaceutical industry like benzoic acid that were selling at high prices on account of the interruption of imports from Germany due to World War I. In 1916, the departure of Roger 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, there was an explosion at the plant. Pennock and two other workers were killed and the plant was completely destroyed. One of the contributing causes was Conant's faulty test procedures.

Following the United States declaration of war on Germany, Conant was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army Sanitary Corps on September 22, 1917. He went to the Camp American University, where he worked on the development of poison gases. Initially, his work concentrated on mustard gas, but in May 1918 Conant took charge of a unit concerned with the development of lewisite. He was promoted to major on July 20, 1918. A pilot plant was built, and then a full-scale production plant in Cleveland. However, the war ended before lewisite could be used in battle.

After the war ended, Conant was discharged from the Army and returned to Harvard, where he was appointed an assistant professor of chemistry on September 1, 1919. The following year he became engaged to Richards's daughter, Grace (Patty) Thayer Richards. They were married in the Appleton 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.

Chemistry professor

Conant became an associate professor in 1924. In 1925, he visited Germany, then the heart of chemical research, for eight months. He toured the major universities and laboratories there and met many of the leading chemists, including Theodor Curtius, Kazimierz Fajans, Hans Fischer, Arthur Hantzsch, Hans Meerwein, Jakob Meisenheimer, Hermann Staudinger, Adolf Windaus and Karl Ziegler. After Conant returned to the United States, Arthur Amos Noyes made him an attractive offer to move to Caltech. 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 to US$122,782 as of 2024) and a grant of $9,000 per annum for research. Conant accepted, and stayed at Harvard. In 1929, he became the Sheldon Emery Professor of Organic Chemistry, and then, in 1931, the Chairman of the Chemistry Department.

Between 1928 and 1933, Conant published 55 papers. He explored chemical kinetics, particularly the relationship between the chemical equilibrium and the reaction rate of chemical processes. Conant was one of the first to realise that while this relationship was sometimes straightforward and simple, at other times it could be quite complex. He investigated the biochemistry of oxyhemoglobin, and determined that methemoglobin contains ferric (Fe³⁺) iron rather than the ferrous (Fe²⁺) of normal hemoglobin, and therefore that, unlike oxyhemoglobin, methemoglobin cannot bind oxygen. He investigated superacid solutions, and used them to study chlorophyll. He also published three papers describing experiments in which he polymerized isoprene to create synthetic rubber.

Conant wrote a chemistry textbook with Black, entitled Practical Chemistry, which was published in 1920, with a revised edition in 1929. This was superseded in 1937 by their New Practical Chemistry, which in turn had a revised edition in 1946. The text proved a popular one; it was adopted by 75 universities, and Conant received thousands of dollars in royalties. For his accomplishments in chemistry, he was awarded the American Chemical Society's Nichols Medal, Columbia University's Chandler Medal in 1932, and the American Chemical Society's highest honor, the Priestley Medal, in 1944. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1924, and the National Academy of Sciences in 1929.

President of Harvard

On October 9, 1933, Conant became the President of Harvard University with a low-key installation ceremony in the Faculty Room of University Hall. This set the tone for Conant's presidency as one of informality and reform. At his inauguration he accepted the charter and seal presented to John Leverett the Younger in 1707, but dropped a number of other customs, including the singing of Gloria Patri and the Latin Oration. This was a sign of things to come. 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 an A.B. degree while those who had not received an S.B. One of his first efforts at reform was to attempt to abolish this distinction, but it took over a decade to accomplish. 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 necessary calculus 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.

Other reforms included the abolition of class rankings and athletic scholarships, but his first, longest and most bitter battle was over tenure 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. This policy led junior faculty to revolt, and nearly resulted in Conant's dismissal in 1938. Conant was fond of saying: "Behold the turtle. It only makes progress only when it sticks its neck out."

Award of honorary degrees at Harvard to Robert Oppenheimer (left), George C. Marshall (third from left) and Omar N. Bradley (fifth from left) in June 1947. Conant sits between Marshall and Bradley. Marshall used the occasion to announce the Marshall Plan.

Conant added new graduate degrees in education, history of science and public policy, and he introduced the Nieman Fellowship for journalists to study at Harvard. He supported the "meatballs", as lower class students were called. He instituted the Harvard national Scholarships for underprivileged students. Dudley House was opened as a place where non-resident students could stay. Conant asked two of his assistant deans, Henry Chauncey and William Bender, to determine whether the Scholastic Aptitude Test was a good measure of academic potential. When they reported that it was, Conant adopted it. He waged a ten-year campaign for the consolidation of testing services, which resulted in the creation of the Educational Testing Service in 1946, with Chauncey as its director. Theodore H. White noted that "Conant was the first president to recognize that meatballs were Harvard men too."

Instead of conducting separate but identical undergraduate courses for Harvard students and students from Radcliffe College, Conant instituted co-educational classes. It was during his presidency that the first class of women were admitted to Harvard Medical School in 1945, and Harvard Law School in 1950. Lowell had imposed a 15 percent quota on Jewish students in 1922, something Conant had voted to support. This quota was later substituted with geographic distribution preferences, having the same effect of limiting Jewish admission. Conant eased these preferences later in his presidency. In the words of historians Morton and Phyllis Keller, he "shared the mild antisemitism common to his social group and time."

In 1934, Ernst Hanfstaengl attended the 25th anniversary reunion of his class of 1909, and gave a number of speeches, including the 1934 commencement address. Hanfstaengl wrote out a check for 2,500 Reichsmarks (roughly equivalent to US$239,149 as of 2024) to Conant for a scholarship to enable an outstanding Harvard student to study for a year in Germany. The President and Fellows of Harvard College rejected the offer due to Hanfstaengl's Nazi associations. When the issue of Hanfstaengl's scholarship came up again in 1936, Conant turned the money down a second time. Hanfstaengl's presence on campus prompted a series of anti-Nazi demonstrations, in which a number of Harvard and MIT students were arrested. Conant made a personal plea for clemency that resulted in two girls being acquitted, but six boys and a girl were sentenced to six months in prison.

When the University of Berlin awarded an honorary degree to Roscoe Pound, who had made no secret of his admiration for the Nazi regime, Conant refused to order Pound not to accept it, and attended the award ceremony. While he declined to participate in the Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced German Scholars, Harvard awarded honorary degrees to Thomas Mann and Albert Einstein in 1935. What Conant feared most was disruption to Harvard's tercentennial celebrations in 1936, but there was no trouble, despite the presence of Franklin D. Roosevelt of the class of 1904, whom many Harvard graduates regarded as a socialist and a class traitor. It was only with difficulty that Lowell was persuaded to be presiding officer at an event at which Roosevelt spoke.

An incident took place during the 1941 Harvard–Navy lacrosse game, when the Harvard Crimson men's lacrosse team attempted to field a player of African-American descent. The Navy Midshipmen men's lacrosse team's coach then refused to field his team. Harvard's athletic director, William J. Bingham, overruled his lacrosse coach, and had the player, Lucien Victor Alexis, Jr., sent back to Cambridge on a train. Conant subsequently apologized to the Commandant of Midshipmen. After serving in World War II, Alexis was refused admittance to Harvard Medical School on the grounds that, as the only black student, he would have no one to room with.

National Defense Research Committee

In June 1940, Vannevar Bush recruited Conant to his National Defense Research Committee (NDRC), although he remained president of Harvard. Conant became head of the NDRC's Division B, the division responsible for bombs, fuels, gases and chemicals. On June 28, 1941, Roosevelt signed Executive Order 8807, which created the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD), with Bush as its director. Conant succeeded Bush as Chairman of NDRC, which was subsumed into the OSRD. Roger Adams succeeded Conant as head of Division B. Conant became the driving force of the NDRC on personnel and policy matters.

Conant attending a meeting at the University of California, Berkeley in 1940. From left to right: Ernest O. Lawrence, Arthur H. Compton, Vannevar Bush, Conant, Karl T. Compton, and Alfred L. Loomis

Roosevelt appointed Conant to the Rubber Survey Committee in August 1942. This committee, chaired by Bernard M. Baruch, was tasked with reviewing the synthetic rubber program. Corporations used patent laws to restrict competition and stifle innovation. When the Japanese occupation of Malaya, North Borneo and Sarawak, followed by the Japanese occupation of Indonesia, cut off 90 percent of the supply of natural rubber, the rubber shortage became a national scandal, and the development of synthetic substitutes, an urgent priority. Baruch dealt with the difficult political issues; Conant concerned himself with the technical ones. There were a number of different synthetic rubber products to choose from. In addition to DuPont's neoprene, Standard Oil had licensed German patents for a copolymer called Buna-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. The Rubber Survey Committee made a series of recommendations, including the appointment of a rubber director, and the construction of 51 synthetic rubber plants. 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.

In February 1941, Roosevelt sent Conant to Britain as head of a mission that also included Frederick L. Hovde and Carroll L. Wilson to evaluate the research being carried out there and the prospects for cooperation. The 1940 Tizard Mission had revealed that American technology was some years behind that of Britain in many fields, most notably radar, and cooperation was eagerly sought. Conant had lunch with Winston Churchill and Frederick Lindemann, and an audience with King George VI at Buckingham Palace. At a subsequent meeting, Lindeman told Conant about British progress towards making an atomic bomb. What most impressed Conant was the British conviction that it was feasible. The American and British progress also raised the possibility in Conant's mind that the German nuclear energy project might be further ahead still. Later that year, Churchill, as Chancellor of the University of Bristol, conferred an honorary degree on Conant.

Conant subsequently moved to restrict cooperation with Britain on nuclear energy, particularly its post-war aspects, and became involved in heated negotiations with Wallace Akers, the representative of Tube Alloys. 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. His objections were swept aside by Roosevelt, who brokered the Quebec Agreement with Churchill, that restored full cooperation. After the Quebec Conference, Churchill visited Conant at Harvard, where Conant returned the 1941 gesture, and presented Churchill with an honorary Doctor of Laws degree.

OSRD handed the atomic bomb project, better known as the Manhattan Project, over to the Army, with Brigadier General Leslie 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. In May 1945, he became part of the Interim Committee that was formed to advise the new president, Harry S. Truman on nuclear weapons. The Interim Committee decided that the atomic bomb should be used against an industrial target in Japan as soon as possible and without warning. On July 16, 1945, Conant was among the dignitaries present at the Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range for Trinity nuclear test, the first detonation of an atomic bomb.

After the war, Conant became concerned about growing criticism of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by figures like Norman Cousins and Reinhold Niebuhr. He played an important behind-the-scenes role in shaping public opinion by instigating and then editing an influential February 1947 Harper's article entitled "The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb". Written by former Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson with the help of McGeorge Bundy, the article stressed that the Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were used to avoid the possibility of "over a million casualties", from a figure found in the estimates given to the Joint Chiefs of Staff by its Joint Planning Staff in 1945.

Cold War

The Atomic Energy Act of 1946 replaced the wartime Manhattan Project with the Atomic 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 to Robert Oppenheimer. 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. When the new AEC chairman David E. Lilienthal raised security concerns about Oppenheimer's relationships with communists, including Oppenheimer's brother Frank Oppenheimer, his wife Kitty and his former girlfriend Jean 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 a Q clearance, granting him access to atomic secrets.

President Harry S. Truman, center, presents Conant, at right, with the Medal of Merit and Bronze Oak Leaf Cluster. Vannevar Bush watches at left.

By September 1948, the Red 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. Conant was a member of the Educational Policies Commission (EPC), a body to which he had been appointed in 1941. When it next met in March 1949, Conant's push for a ban was supported by the president of Columbia University, General of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower. The two found common ground in their shared belief in ideology-based education, 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, and he disapproved of the public funding of denominational schools that he observed in Australia during his visit there in 1951. He called for increased Federal spending on education, and higher taxes to redistribute wealth. His thinking was outlined in his books Education in a Divided World in 1948, and Education and Liberty in 1951. In 1952, he went further and endorsed the dismissal of academics who invoked the Fifth under questioning by the House Un-American Activities Committee.

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 of Detlev Bronk, the President of Johns Hopkins University, after a "revolt" by scientists unhappy with Conant. The GAC was enormously influential throughout the late 1940s, but the opposition of Oppenheimer and Conant to the development of the hydrogen bomb, only to be overridden by President Harry S. Truman in 1950, diminished its stature. 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. Conant was appointed to the National Science Board, which administered the new National Science Foundation, and was elected its chairman. In April 1951, Truman appointed Conant to the Science Advisory Committee.

Conant's experience with the Manhattan Project convinced him that the public needed a better understanding of science, and he moved to revitalize the history 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. In 1952, he began teaching another undergraduate course, Philosophy 150, "A Philosophy of Science". In his teachings and writing on the philosophy of science, he drew heavily on those of his Harvard colleague Willard Van Orman Quine. Conant contributed to the 1950 Harvard Case Histories in Experimental Science with an account of the overthrow of the phlogiston theory. In 1951, he published Science and Common Sense, in which he attempted to explain the ways of scientists to laymen. Conant's ideas about scientific progress would come under attack by his own protégés, notably Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Conant commented on the manuscript in draft form.

High Commissioner

Conant as United States High Commissioner for Germany, 1953.

In April 1951 Conant had been approached by the Secretary of State, Dean Acheson, about replacing John J. McCloy as United States High Commissioner for Germany, but had declined. However, after 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 the Harvard 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.

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, but most Germans wanted a neutral and reunited Germany. At home, the Eisenhower administration sought to reduce its defense spending by re-arming 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 in USIA libraries there to be burned.

The first crisis to occur on Conant's watch was the uprising 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 as Chancellor in September, but this 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's New Look policy. Conant lobbied for the European Defense Community. This would have established a pan-European military, which 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, this cleared the way for West Germany to become part of NATO with its own army.

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 re-arm. The office of the United States High Commissioner was abolished and Conant became instead the first United States Ambassador to West Germany. 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.

Conant returned to the United States in February 1957, and moved to New York. In 1959 he authored the The American High School Today. This became a best seller, resulting in Conant's appearance on the cover of Time magazine. He was presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, with special distinction, by President Lyndon Johnson on December 6, 1963. He had been selected for the award by President John F. Kennedy, but the ceremony had been delayed, and was presented with the award after Kennedy's assassination in November 1963. President Richard Nixon presented him with the Atomic Pioneers Award from the Atomic Energy Commission in February 1970.

Death and legacy

Between 1965 and 1969, Conant, suffering from a heart condition, worked on his biography, My Several Lives. He became increasingly infirm, and suffered a series of strokes in 1977. He died in a nursing home Hanover, New Hampshire, on February 11, 1978. His body was cremated and his ashes interred in the Thayer-Richards family plot at Mount Auburn Cemetery. He was survived by his wife and sons. His papers are in the Harvard University Archives. Amongst 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. It was given to Drew Faust in 2007, who broke the seal. It contained a letter in which Conant expressed his hopes and fears for the future to his successor. "You will receive this note and 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."

Bibliography

• Black, N. H.; Conant, J. B. (1920). Practical Chemistry: Fundamental Facts and Applications to Modern Life. New York: Macmillan. OCLC 3639905.
• Conant, J. B. (1928). Organic Chemistry. New York: Macmillan.
• Conant, J. B. (1932). Equilibria and Rates of Some Organic Reactions. New York: Columbia University Press.
• Conant, J. B. (1933). The Chemistry of Organic Compounds. New York: Macmillan.
• Conant, J. B.; Tishler, Max (1936). Organic Chemistry. New York: Macmillan.
• Black, N. H.; Conant, J. B. (1937). New Practical Chemistry. New York: Macmillan.
• Conant, J. B.; Tishler, Max (1939). The Chemistry of Organic Compounds. New York: Macmillan.
• Conant, J. B. (1944). Our Fighting Faith. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
• Conant, J. B.; Blatt, A. H. (1947). The Chemistry of Organic Compounds. New York: Macmillan.
• Conant, J. B. (1948). On Understanding Science, An Historical Approach. New Haven: Yale University Press.
• Conant, J. B. (1948). Harvard Case Histories in Experimental Science. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
• Conant, J. B. (1948). Education in a Divided World. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
• Conant, J. B. (1949). The Growth of Experimental Sciences: An Experiment in General Education. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
• Conant, J. B. (1949). Fundamentals of Organic Chemistry. New York: Macmillan.
• Conant, J. B. (1951). Science and Common Sense. New Haven: Yale University Press.
• Conant, J. B. (1953). Education and Liberty. Garden City, New York: Doubleday.
• Conant, J. B. (1955). Gleichheit der Chancen: Erziehung und Gesellschaftsordnung in den Vereinigten Staaten. Bad Manheim: Christian-Verlag.
• Conant, J. B. (1956). The Citadel of Learning. New Haven: Yale University Press.
• Conant, J. B. (1958). Deutschland und die Freiheit. Frankfurt: Ullstein.
• Conant, J. B. (1959). The American High School Today. New York: McGraw-Hill.
• Conant, J. B. (1959). The Child, the Parent, and the State. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
• Conant, J. B. (1960). Education in the Junior High School Years. New York: McGraw-Hill.
• Conant, J. B. (1961). Slums and Suburbs, A Commentary on Schools in Metropolitan Areas. New York: McGraw-Hill.
• Conant, J. B. (1962). Thomas Jefferson and the Development of American Public Education. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Conant, J. B. (1962). Germany and Freedom, A Personal Appraisal. New York: Capricorn Books.
• Conant, J. B. (1963). The Education of American Teachers. New York: McGraw-Hill.
• Conant, J. B. (1964). Shaping Educational Policy. New York: McGraw-Hill.
• Conant, J. B. (1964). Two Modes of Thought. New York: Trident Press.
• Conant, J. B. (1967). The Comprehensive High School, A Second Report to Interested Citizens. New York: McGraw-Hill.
• Conant, J. B. (1967). Scientific Principles and Moral Conduct. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Conant, J. B. (1970). My Several Lives, Memoirs of a Social Inventor. New York: Harper & Row. OCLC 58674. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

• For a complete list of his published scientific papers, see Bartlett 1983, pp. 113–121.

References

• Bartlett, Paul D. (1983). James Bryant Conant, 1893–1978: A Biographical Memoir (PDF). Biographical Memoirs. Washington, D.C.: The National Academy Press. OCLC 41889424. Retrieved 27 April 2012. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Biddle, Justin (2011). "Putting Pragmatism to Work in the Cold War: Science, Technology, and Politics in the Writings of James B. Conant". Studies in History and Philosophy of Science. 42 (4): 552–561. doi:10.1016/j.shpsa.2011.07.002. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
• Giangreco, D. M. (1997). "Casualty Projections for the U.S. Invasions of Japan, 1945–1946: Planning and Policy Implications". Journal of Military History. 61 (3): pp. 521–582. {{cite journal}}: |pages= has extra text (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
• Hershberg, James G. (1993). James B. Conant: Harvard to Hiroshima and the Making of the Nuclear Age. New York: Knopf. ISBN 0-394-57966-6. OCLC 27678159. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Hewlett, Richard G.; Anderson, Oscar E. (1962). The New World, 1939–1946. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. ISBN 0-520-07186-7. OCLC 637004643. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Hewlett, Richard G.; Duncan, Francis (1969). Atomic Shield, 1947–1952. A History of the United States Atomic Energy Commission. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. ISBN 0-520-07187-5. OCLC 3717478. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Kevles, Daniel J. (1977). "The National Science Foundation and the Debate over Postwar Research Policy, 1942–1945: A Political Interpretation of Science—The Endless Frontier". Isis. 68 (1). The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science Society: pp. 4–26. JSTOR 230370. {{cite journal}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); |pages= has extra text (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
• Saltzman, Martin D. (2003). "James Bryant Conant: The Making of an Iconoclastic Chemist" (PDF). Bulletin for the History of Chemistry. 28 (2). Retrieved May 2, 2012. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Stewart, Irvin (1948). Organizing Scientific Research for War: The Administrative History of the Office of Scientific Research and Development. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. OCLC 500138898. Retrieved April 1, 2012. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Stimson, Henry L. (1947). "The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb". Harper's Magazine: pp. 97–107. {{cite journal}}: |pages= has extra text (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

External links

• "Annotated bibliography for James Conant". Alsos Digital Library. Retrieved June 16, 2012.
• Conant, Jennet (May 2, 2005). "My Grandfather and the Bomb". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved June 16, 2012.
• "Participants: James Bryant Conant". Oregon State University. Retrieved June 16, 2012.
• National Academy of Sciences Biographical Memoir