James Bryant Conant

James Bryant Conant (1893-1978) was an American chemist born in Dorchester, Massachusetts, whose research on natural products, including chlorophyll, and on the relationship between chemical equilibrium and reaction rate contributed to the modern understanding of acid-base chemistry and biochemistry. He served as the 23rd president of Harvard University from 1933 to 1953, where he abolished class rankings and athletic scholarships, promoted merit-based admissions through the SAT, and for the first time admitted women to Harvard's medical and law schools. During the Second World War he chaired the National Defense Research Committee, overseeing the Manhattan Project's development of the atomic bomb and attending the Trinity test in 1945, and after the war he sat on the Atomic Energy Commission's General Advisory Committee, where he opposed development of the hydrogen bomb. He later served as the first United States Ambassador to West Germany from 1955 to 1957 and wrote influential books on education and the scientific method for general readers.