James Bryant Conant

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James Bryant Conant, 1932.
James Bryant Conant during a press conference in Berlin on February 18, 1953

James Bryant Conant (born March 26, 1893 in Dorchester , Massachusetts , USA , † February 11, 1978 in Hanover , New Hampshire ) was an American chemist , science politician and diplomat . As director of the National Defense Research Committee and also President of Harvard University , he was responsible for the mobilization of scientific resources in World War II and thus above all for the Manhattan Project .

life and work

After completing school in Boston , he studied chemistry at Harvard University , where he received his doctorate in 1917 under Elmer Peter Kohler and Theodore William Richards . He then taught physical and organic chemistry at this university . Conant was the mentor of Thomas S. Kuhn and convinced him to switch from physics to the history of science .

For two decades, from 1933 to 1953, he was President of Harvard University. Here he introduced numerous far-reaching reforms aimed at achievement-oriented admission of students. These reforms were seen as exemplary and adopted by numerous US universities.

He was also chairman of the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC) during the Second World War and then until 1946, where he drove politically with his friend Vannevar Bush , the director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development , OSRD) made decisive progress with the Manhattan project to develop the first atomic bomb. After the war ended, he worked as a consultant for the National Science Foundation and the Atomic Energy Commission.

Conant was chairman of the Committee on the Present Danger (CPD), an anti-communist lobby organization , in the 1950s . From 1953 to 1955 he served as the US High Commissioner in Germany and from 1955 to 1957 as the first US Ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany .

In 1924 Conant was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences , in 1929 to the National Academy of Sciences . In 1932 he was accepted into the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina for the chemistry research area .

In 1941 he was admitted to the Royal Society as a Foreign Member . The American Philosophical Society , of which he was a member since 1935, awarded him in 1943 with their Benjamin Franklin Medal . In 1944 he received the Priestley Medal from the American Chemical Society . The Keio University awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1961 .

In 1927 he introduced the term super acids .

Publications

  • Harvard case histories in experimental science Practical Chemistry (1920, together with NH Black)
  • Chemistry of Organic Compounds (1933)
  • On Understanding Science (1948)
  • Science and Common Sense . New Haven: Yale University Press (1951)
  • Education and Liberty (1953)
  • The American High School Today (1959)
  • Slums and Suburbs (1961)
  • The Education of American Teachers (1963)
  • My Several Lives (1970)

Individual evidence

  1. Life data, publications and academic family tree of James Bryant Conant at academictree.org, accessed January 1, 2018.
  2. ^ William Whitlow: Thomas Kuhn, Postmodernism and Materialistic Dialectics
  3. Member entry of James Bryant Conant at the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , accessed on April 11, 2015.
  4. entry on Conant; James Bryant (1893-1978) in the Archives of the Royal Society , London
  5. ^ Member History: James B. Conant. American Philosophical Society, accessed June 25, 2018 .
  6. ^ Conferment of Honorary Degree of Doctor (1953-1979) , Keiō University

Web links

Commons : James B. Conant  - collection of images, videos and audio files
predecessor Office successor
Leland B. Morris US Ambassador to Germany
1955–1957
David KE Bruce