James Bryant Conant Quotes

James Bryant Conant was born in Dorchester, Boston, Massachusetts, USA. He was an American chemist, a transformative President of Harvard University from 1933-1953, and the first U.S. Ambassador to West Germany from 1955-1957. He earned a BA degree from Harvard University in 1913. He obtained his PhD in Chemistry from Harvard University in 1916. During World War I he served in the U.S. Army, working on the development of poison gases. He became an assistant professor of chemistry at Harvard in 1919, and the Sheldon Emery Professor of Organic Chemistry in 1929. He researched the physical structures of natural products, particularly chlorophyll, and he was one of the first to explore the sometimes complex relationship between chemical equilibrium and the reaction rate of chemical processes. He received Priestley Medal in 1943. President Lyndon Johnson presented Conant with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, with special distinction, on December 6, 1963. In February 1970, President Richard Nixon presented Conant with the Atomic Pioneers Award from the Atomic Energy Commission.