James Bryant Conant - Early Life

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.