BOOKS
Portrait Of A Scientific Patriot Reviewed by Wil Lepkowski pames Bryant Conant, a name that I is known to any chemist conscious f of history and over the age of 45, called himself "not a committed man but a restless soul." So reports historian James G. Hershberg in his biography of Conant: "James B. Conant: Harvard to Hiroshima and the Making of the Nuclear Age." Conanfs self-assessment forms kind of a leitmotif quietly playing throughout this biography of one of the 20th century's greatest scientific figures who died debilitated in 1978 at the age of 84. Conant, president of Harvard University from 1933 to 1953, was tireless in service to the country and to higher education. Yet he lived his final years disabled from cardiovascular ailments and eventually a stroke, ruing the worth of his life. Hershberg's biography is an unbalanced one. It is skimpy on the texture of Conanfs period as a research chemist at Harvard. It contains almost nothing concerning the technical decisions he made in administering the World War II research effort as chairman of the National Defense Research Committee. But it is very successful in weaving Conant's subsurface persona in with his ups and downs as a prominent and committed public figure. And it leaves out little detail in describing top-level decisions involving the Cold War geopolitics of nuclear weaponry. Conant was a participant in most of these decisions—with Presidents Roosevelt and Truman themselves, their Secretaries of War and State, and, of course, all the major scientific figures of the time. Conant's doubts that his years of public service really accomplished much would draw more sympathy if the syndrome weren't so commonplace. It is an end condition almost routine to public figures and makes one wonder what deeper values Conant carried other than the belief that good thinking, inspired by a Harvard University mentality, was a fit and proper method to approach all the world's major problems.
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one might ask, what else is new about public figures? Public figures belong to the public as self-sacrificial icons in whom their own happiness, and that of others close to them, is merely peripheral to their epic journeys. This is a book to be read in two distinct ways: first, as a history of science, technology, and atomic diplomacy during World War II and its Cold War aftermath; second, as the internal journey of a man constantly struggling with values but somehow never fully engaging the struggle emotionally. To Conant, the quantitative, scientific mind evidently came first. And although he adopted the humanities after he passed middle age, he was frequently on record as deriding At the center of atomic the "verbal mindedness" of humanists and social scientists in their ethical but— debates during World War II to him—woolly attitudes toward issues and the Cold War, James of peace against truculent Russian antagonists. It is ironic that he devoted Conant made a mark but an the last portion of his career to a project was pure social science: educationinsufficiently lasting stamp althatreform. A reader of the book will enter the realm of the greats, the shapers of "James B. Conant: Harvard to Hiroworlds created by the atomic blasts at shima and the Making of the Nuclear Age/' by James G. Hershberg, Alfred Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A reader will A. Knopf, 201 East 50th St., New York, also find something of Conant's attempts to make chemical warfare reN.Y. 10022,1993, 948 pages, $35 spectable. (He ran what was essentially a Manhattan Project for chemical warfare at American University during World Conant left behind him a trail of per- War I and defended its use at every ceived disappointments—an insane opportunity.) arms race he tried vainly to prevent; A reader will also experience succufrustration at not standing up quite lent slices of Harvard history such as strongly enough for academic freedom Conanfs battle to open the place up to against the communist witch hunts of the hoi polloi of America's youth, bring the 1950s; a feeling of failure as ambassa- about a spicier array of faculty such as dor to West Germany; ideas for school economist John Kenneth Galbraith, and reform that were never truly implement- weed out unproductive professors. Coed; a gracious, erudite but unhappy nant made Harvard more egalitarian, wife; and a couple of sons—one mental- and on him rained the wrath of New ly ill—neither of whom liked him very England bralimins and Harvard's "vermuch apparently because he was only bal minded" faculty. But he persevered, infrequently there for them. and Harvard is the better for it. Chemists may want to plunge into In 1952, in an interview with Newsweek, Conant confessed to "no sense of this book if only to become familiar with accomplishment" in preventing a nucle- probably the most politically successful ar arms race. And a year before he died person of their kind. Conant was no bit he told another interviewer, ''Everything player in Cold War history. He was a I've worked for has been rejected." So, bulwark of a certain set of values that
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BOOKS beamed, as radio waves via Conant, from the spiritual megatower that was Harvard. Conant used his position to the maximum. He spoke to America and the world as the preserver of academic freedom and its relevance to the rest of the society. He represented wisdom, such as it were, and knew it. The issue of "soul," however, was another matter, one whose concept he admitted to being uncomfortable with. Yet, as he grew older he voiced increasing skepticism about the scientific approach to problem solving. And he never be-lieved in the social or economic benefits of atomic energy. "I do not like the atomic age or any of its consequences," he said in one lecture. 'To learn to adjust to these consequences with charity and sanity is the chief spiritual problem of our time." I came away from reading this biography feeling bemused by my lack of real engagement with this "uncommitted man with the restless soul." As Hershberg writes, "Repeatedly, Conant defined and adopted lofty principles, but his actions uncomfortably blended principle and pragmatism, courage and squeamishness, personal integrity and concessions to the restraint of his position." Conant made a mark on history but an insufficiently lasting stamp. He was at the center of every major scientific and technological issue during World War II, and yet he was curiously off to the side as well. As a follower of science policy, for example, I never hear old-timers open a thought with, "as Jim Conant used to say" or "Conant would have thought that." Yet Conant did serve as the National Science Board's first chairman and fought for a National Science Foundation conceived along the lines outlined by Vannevar Bush in his report, "The Endless Frontier." The truth is that it was Bush, Conant's colleague from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Carnegie Institution of Washington, who shaped U.S. science policy after World War II. Conant merely advised, and at that only as a chairman of the General Advisory Committee to the young Atomic Energy Commission. The relation between Conant and Bush, however, was close. Conant directed the National Defense Research Committee during the war, while Bush oversaw the broader policy realms as head of the Office of Scientific Research & Development. 34
JULY 11,1994 C&EN
Conant reported to Bush while Bush reported to the President. Equally to the point, Conant is not remembered as his friend Robert Oppenheimer was, or even in the way the eccentric Hungarian Leo Szilard was. "Oppie" was a luminous but eventually tragic figure who administered the building of the atomic bomb at Los Alamos only to become discredited as a communist sympathizer during the 1950s. Conant publicly defended him, but Oppenheimer lost his security clearance during that time, precluding him from any important advisory functions with the government during that crucial era. And he never got over it. Szilard, as the recent biography by William Lanouette makes clear, had no affiliation with any institution, much less Harvard, until the latter years of his life (C&EN, Nov. 1,1993, page 42). Yet Szilard is seen as an intellectual and ethical saint by his detachment from the trappings of wealth and power. He adhered to the principle that the bomb should never have been used and had to be kept clear of military control. Conant, who in many ways had the mind and verbal qualities of a diplomat, waffled on that latter issue and waffled worse during the McCarthy era in stating that anyone with communist affiliations or sympathies had no place at Harvard or any other academic institutions and ought to be dismissed. No one from Harvard was, but Conant's unworkable principle remained, of course, on the record, and somewhere between his mind and soul he regretted establishing it. Hershberg, here, is harsh in his judgment of Conant: "In allowing his faith in democratic rights and freedoms to falter, in seeking an expedient compromise rather unflinchingly standing up to McCarthyism, Conant... was guilty of the failure of nerve that afflicted so many leaders of U.S. politics, culture, and education." So no canonization for Conant; no appellation such as 'legendary" attached to his name. Not much warm affection, either. His wife, Grace (Patty) Richards, was a loyal and gracious companion. And being the daughter of the internationally renowned Harvard chemist Theodore Richards, she knew exactly how to conduct herself as the mate of one so crowned. Nevertheless, Hershberg presents her as an often melancholy figure who knew the game, remained
beside Conant as wife and confidante, but seldom felt especially close to her husband. As for his sons, the mischievous Theodore came out apparently all right and helped Hershberg out with frequent interviews. James R.—Conant's first born—was another story. He was clearly a bright but psychologically sensitive lad and never displayed the verve Conant hoped he would show in following in the great man's footsteps. Submarine service during World War II took its toll on his psyche, and he spent the rest of his life fighting depression and alcoholism before dying at 60. Hershberg leaves it up to the reader to decide whether the father's busy life and detached temperament were factors in the relative alienation of his sons. Conant, of course, suffered as well, especially during the dark, anticommunist days following World War II. He labored as the voice of reason in pre venting an arms race—in the inner sanctums of government and more publicly through constant streams of writing and interviews. Conant stuck with Oppenheimer during the physicist's travails, and tolerated the pesky Szilard. But he lacked passion. And his need to personify the canons of policy and of academia without much emotional force left him standing outside the edge of commitment, appearing somehow as not quite at the right ethical spot at the right ethical time. It is unfair that someone who put so much into public service achieved so little in the form of satisfaction. His colleagues at the National Academy of Sciences gave him the ultimate prophet-without-honor treatment in 1953 when they rejected his bid to become NAS president. Conant was hoping to cap his public service career with the academy presidency by serving as science's top statesman. Not to be. Conant was joined with Oppenheimer in opposing development of the hydrogen bomb. Accordingly, a group of NAS chemists who were also part of the American Chemical Society power structure successfully fought his candidacy. Physicist Detlev Bronk, then president of Johns Hopkins University, was elected instead. Hershberg relates that Conant feigned indifference to the insult but that he was deeply hurt. When the opportunity came to leave the country for a totally different ambiance, he leaped at the chance, becoming High Commissioner
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(essentially ambassador) to West Germany. Especially enraged was his friend and Harvard colleague George Kistiakowsky, who urged him to show interest in becoming White House science adviser. But Conant had enough of science and the scientific community. He never attended a single academy meeting after that. Germany didn't turn out too well for him, either. Again, while Conant was perfectly capable of entertaining diplomats as well as folks of most stripe, he couldn't quite exercise enough charm with politicians. He and the West German Chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, never got along. And eventually Conant left the post, returning to the U.S. where he delved into reforming American schools, visiting the kinds of neighborhood schools most lofty academicians shun as too far below them. That further embellished his fame as the top American spokesman for reform. But while his studies sparked considerable debate, nothing lasting was accomplished. Conant frequently said that the best years of his life were those between 1920 and 1933, when his life was con-
sumed by chemistry, research, and teaching. In other words, happiness. Hershberg tells us that Conant "wept" when he left his lab for the last time. Instead, he chose public service and all the sacrifice and ego gratification such a choice entails. He did summon the energy in his later years to write his autobiography, "My Several Lives," but Hershberg says the account of his life was disappointingly detached. Conant was not one to wrestle with issues of good and evil. He believed that war imposed different rules on human-
kind. It was violent and had to be engaged violently. Thus, he supported the decision to drop the bombs on Japan. In retirement, he backed U.S. policy in Vietnam but privately questioned it. So what do we make of Hershberg's portrait of Conant? Someone to reflect on, probably, and regret that he never knew how to give of himself fully. What one can do is call Conant a patriot. That will hold and that is probably enough. Wil Lepkowski is a senior correspondent for C&EN in Washington, D.C. He covers science and technology policy. •
Videotape on ethics
in informing the public of scientific advances. Its goal is to present several viewpoints regarding a particular issue, not to provide a clear-cut distinction between right and wrong. Joe Graedon, author and syndicated commentator on health-related topics, is the program's moderator. Single copies are $35 plus postage from RTP Club of Sigma Xi, P.O. Box 13416, Research Triangle Park, N.C. 27709-3416; phone (800) 7684336 or (803) 269-7744. •
A one-hour educational videotape, "Ethical Issues in Scientific Research," is available from the Research Triangle Park Club of Sigma Xi. Produced as a compilation of a 1991 forum of the same name, the tape shows a panel of scientists from academia, industry, and government who deal with the issues of authorship practices, peer review, data reporting, social responsibility of research, scientific fraud, and the role of the media
JULY 11,1994 C&EN 35
