Man of the Hour

by Jennet Conant

  Within a decade, Conant would make his name known to all the leading chemists on the Continent. The 1920s were a period of extraordinary productivity for him. He published more than eighty papers spanning the field, exploring the mysteries of hemoglobin and chlorophyll, superacids and free radicals, expanding developing areas, and achieving an international reputation at the same time American chemistry was on the way to achieving parity with Europe. He blazed a trail in what would become physical-organic chemistry and—along with its earliest British practitioners, Arthur Lapworth and Christopher Kelk Ingold—helped to establish the new discipline. “Almost alone among American chemists at the time, he quickly assumed leadership on both the current frontiers of organic chemistry: fundamental theory and the structure and properties of natural products,” wrote the biophysicist Caryl P. Haskins. “His work was not only of distinction in its own right, but was of national importance in bringing chemical research in the United States in those fields abreast of Europe.”

  Even as his work flourished, Conant remained a “restless soul.” He sought out the stimulation of the wider academic world, spending two semester-long sabbaticals on the Pacific Coast—at the University of California at Berkeley, and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech)—and taking a six-month leave of absence to make a much postponed tour of Germany. The disruptions did nothing to slow his meteoric ascent at Harvard: by 1927, he had reached the highest professorial rank, and two years later became head of the department. With the award of the Chandler Medal in 1932, the Daily Boston Globe reported that Conant was now recognized as “one of the most brilliant of the younger organic chemists this country has produced.” With stunning efficiency, he had fulfilled his expectations of himself and realized the first of his three youthful ambitions. Looking back, he recalled that the bulk of those days were spent in the happy sameness of research, and would always seem to him to have been “the best years” of his life.

  Conant was peculiarly qualified to do pioneering work. His dual thesis with Kohler and Richards placed him in a unique position, and he embarked on his career determined to design experiments that combined his abiding interest in organic chemistry—specifically, the ways in which one organic compound reacted with another—and his training in physical chemistry. His novel, integrated approach bridged the gulf between the two branches of chemistry at a time when it was “almost a point of honor to profess ignorance of the other’s field,” according to Louis P. Hammett, author of a landmark text on the subject, who had the young Harvard chemist as his lab instructor as an undergraduate. In practical terms, it meant Conant was not wedded to the traditional schools of thought in interpreting chemical phenomena. This freedom bore fruit almost immediately.

  It was Conant’s “open mind” that had made his chemical gas operation in World War I such a success, observed the historian Paul F. Douglass, “his habit of adventuring to find out, his operating belief that old answers do not solve new problems.” Even at this early point in his career, his scientific colleagues recognized him as a “calculated gambler,” someone who was “always willing to give a possibly good idea a quick try.”

  He immediately began doing work of path-breaking importance. Beginning in 1922, Conant undertook a major series of investigations of biological systems by applying the methods of electrochemistry—the use of heat, pressure, electricity, and light—to organic compounds. He constructed his own electrochemical apparatus, which had only been in use a short time, and began measuring the potentials (a measure of the energy per unit charge) of electric cells containing certain pairs of organic compounds. It was a new and competitive field, and before long scientific journals in both Europe and America were full of papers by chemists working along similar lines. Over the next several years and many separate studies, principally with Louis Fieser, Conant investigated the reduction potentials of quinones, elucidated the mechanisms of oxidation-reduction, and showed that the electrochemical behavior of organic compounds was in every way analogous to that of inorganic processes. He correctly predicted the intervention of free radicals (molecules that contain at least one unpaired electron) and went on to study their formation and stability and develop the use of radiocarbon to reveal biochemical processes. “He spanned the whole spectrum of the field,” recalled Harvard chemist George Kistiakowsky, “participating in all the areas of importance and anticipating many discoveries to come.”

  One of his most striking contributions to chemistry was in the study of hemoglobin, the protein that carries oxygen from the lungs to the muscles and other tissues in all mammals. Following in the footsteps of the groundbreaking German chemists Wilhelm Z. Kuster and Hans Fischer, Conant tackled one of the great research challenges of the early twentieth century: the respiratory pigments. With his unerring instinct for important problems, and what his colleagues admiringly called his “scientific imagination,” a gift for intuitive guessing, Conant conducted intensive research into the biological pigments hemin (a component of hemoglobin, the protein that provides the red color in blood) and chlorophyll (the green matter in plants). The exact conditions under which hemoglobin combined with oxygen were still being debated, and Conant believed that by using his electrical apparatus he had uncovered a means of studying the oxidation process. All he needed to get started was a solution of hemoglobin. A friend in medical school provided the necessary basic material—a supply of fresh horse blood—that Conant stored in the family ice chest despite his wife’s protests.

  His experiments soon produced results. “The combination of hemoglobin and oxygen was not an oxidation,” Conant reported. “If hemoglobin was oxidized, another compound, methemoglobin, was formed. Methemoglobin could not combine with oxygen.” Working his way forward with what a colleague described as his characteristic “searching logic,” he discovered that methemoglobin could be reduced back to hemoglobin, and when this was done by adding a reducing agent to the solution, the capacity to absorb oxygen was restored. He knew the hemoglobin molecule contained a single iron atom, and concluded that what was involved was “the state of oxidation of this atom.” In 1923 he provided new and definitive evidence about the relation of three molecules: hemoglobin, oxygenated hemoglobin (both containing iron in the reduced, or ferrous, state), and methemoglobin (a ferric compound containing no oxygen on the iron). Realizing he had strayed into a “foreign field,” namely biochemistry, Conant decided not to submit his paper to the Journal of the American Chemical Society, which usually printed communications from his laboratory, but instead sent it to the Journal of Biological Chemistry. Conant had added immeasurably to the understanding of the composition of hemoglobin and how it acts. In the world of chemistry, such advances are regarded as every bit as exciting as any discovery by archeologists or polar explorers. Publication of his paper immediately created a stir.

  A short time afterward, he was accosted by a well-known biologist, who upon seeing the Harvard chemist rocked back on his heels and exclaimed in frustration, “When I read your paper, I felt like shaking your hand to congratulate you and at the same time wringing your neck with my other hand; I was just on the point of making the same experiments myself!”

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  While Conant was busy establishing his reputation as an independent investigator, his wife was struggling to adjust to married life. It was a much more modest existence than Patty had anticipated, but she tried to suffer the relative penury of junior professors without complaint. “Teaching is certainly the thing for comfort on a small income,” she wrote her mother from her tiny, rented house at 8 Shady Hill Square, where the couple had settled on their return from Europe. Even the frugal Conant had to concede it was “a bit small,” but it was only a ten-minute walk from campus, and the best he could do on his salary. With the death of his father in 1922, he could have afforded a larger house, as he took over the management of the estate, a sizable legacy of more than $110,000 in stocks and bonds, and $4,500 in cash, the result of the sale of his engraving business in the last mon
ths of his life. Too prudent to touch the capital, Conant drew on the accruing interest to care for his mother and sisters, and insisted on living off his own earnings.

  Much to his wife’s dismay, his self-discipline and dedication knew no bounds. He disappeared into his laboratory seven days a week, and often retired to his study after dinner to edit his journal articles, despite her attempts to distract him with improving “draughts” of literature. “Jim and I are reading proofs together in the evenings,” Patty reported. “It’s spicey matter—‘520* gr. at 230*, yielding 2 1/2 centimeters’—that sort of thing!”

  While their new home’s proximity to Harvard was appealing, it also meant they were uncomfortably close to Patty’s parents. Conant was on cordial terms with his in-laws but privately resented their constant interference and unsolicited advice. He found himself in the awkward position of being something less than a peer of Richards’s, with not only his professional performance subject to scrutiny, but also every aspect of his personal life, habits, tastes, and choice of friends. Try as he might, however, he found it impossible to separate his wife from the entanglements of family. She soaked up their comments, complaints, and quarrels, and he blamed them for upsetting her equilibrium. Both her brothers had inherited their father’s nervous susceptibility and were never-ending sources of conflict and upheaval. Bill, who suffered a low period after completing his PhD in chemistry at Harvard, left to continue his studies abroad, first under the famed British physicist Sir Ernest Rutherford at Cambridge University, followed by a term at Göttingen. Over time his native gloominess—which he described as intervals of paralyzing dread and “overapprehensiveness” that had dogged him since the age of sixteen—deepened, and he would scandalize the family by deciding to undergo a long course of psychoanalysis with a “Jewish doctor” in Berlin. Thayer, who dreamed of becoming a naval architect, was puzzlingly erratic and seemed to “borrow trouble” at every turn. Aware of their tendencies, Miriam attempted to run her children’s lives well into adulthood.

  Patty, the most pliable, had no notion of how to function independently of her mother, whom she insisted on involving in the intricacies of her daily existence. The more Conant tried to set boundaries, the more she slipped back to Follen Street, lonely, bereft, and riddled with anxieties about her ability to be a good wife. A few weeks after she returned from her honeymoon, Patty penned a maudlin letter revealing how desperately she missed her mother—the mere thought of her was “something to weep about”—and counted on her as “the deepest underpinning of life.” Describing herself as fortunate to have “the perfect husband,” Patty confessed that “he is so devoted to me it almost frightens me sometimes when I think of what I have to live up to—so I simply stop thinking at this point.”

  Married life did not come easily to her. Unlike the other young professors’ wives, she simply could not cope. She filled her diary with lists of things to do and to remember—“be prompt,” “do not procrastinate”—but the responsibilities of running a house on a budget seemed to overwhelm her. “Patty did not have a practical bone in her body,” observed her niece, Muffy Coolidge. “She had been fussed over by maids her entire life and was not capable of looking after herself let alone anyone else.” She took cooking lessons, but the challenge of getting a meal to the table often defeated her, and she despaired of her husband’s exacting standards. “Jim wants perfection in food,” she fretted to her diary. “Well, I have bent all my energies in that direction—and have tried to be economical to boot.”

  When Conant finally ventured into the kitchen one night to see what was holding up dinner, he was shocked to find the place an utter shambles. A chemist who always kept his laboratory workbench immaculate, he was appalled by the spectacle of the greasy stove, blackened pots and pans, and sink overflowing with dirty dishes—and at the center, Patty, panting and red-faced from her exertions. Years later, he confided to her cousin Elinor Gregory that he realized then that the disarray was indicative of a more serious problem. What he had viewed in the first flush of romance as his wife’s youthful innocence—her vagueness, vacillating moods, and incongruous Victorianism—were symptoms of a deeper fragility. She had absolutely no capacity for self-sufficiency. Without constant support and reassurance, she fell apart. Though he could scarcely afford a housekeeper, Conant hired a woman to come in to clean once a week and retained a kind elderly cook to prepare the evening meal.

  It was the beginning of an unhappy cycle of hiring and firing household “help” that would continue the rest of their married life. Threatened by competence, Patty would eventually take against anyone in her employ, convinced that she was the object of gossip and ridicule, or “invidious remarks” about her meanness and penny-pinching. She would lash out in anger, accusing them of taking liberties or being lazy. The maids would either quit on the spot, or answer back and be sent packing. This pattern was only exacerbated by the birth of their first son, James “Jimmy” Richards Conant, in May 1923. Worried about her fitness as a mother, she quickly relinquished the care of the newborn to a nurse. The minute the baby appeared to bond with the nanny, however, Patty dismissed the girl in a jealous rage. Complaining to her parents of the difficulty of finding adequate staff—“the servant question is certainly a burden!”—she would solicit recommendations for a replacement governess, only to abruptly fire her. No one was ever good enough or lasted longer than a few months.

  The domestic dramas were never ending. As a succession of cooks, maids, and nannies came and went, Conant begged her to mend her ways. In response to his scolding, Patty vented her frustration in a furious “screed” in her diary: “I have an incorrigible impulse to torment poor little Annie my cook. She is very stupid, piously smug and sanctimonious. On each separate point, I am sure I am in the right: that is not the point. I must stop this—it is almost a habit now.” Penitently recording her transgressions, a habit dating back to childhood, she reiterated her husband’s formula for getting the best out of people. “I must praise more: and only criticize when I need to get results by it. Give up the things she can’t do; let everything possible pass without notice. I ought to take a little notice of her as a human being.” She concluded dolefully, “There’s no worse habit than jumping on subordinates, and the children will sense this and imitate if I let them. Jimmy may be ruined by this habit of yours. No excuse for this is valid.”

  Her sharp tongue also alienated many of the wives in their small academic circle. In 1922, Conant helped form the Shop Club, a monthly dinner society where a diverse group of Harvard scientists, historians, philosophers, and literary critics could meet informally and exchange ideas. Just as he had worked hard as an undergraduate to win a seat at the Signet Society’s high table, Conant continued to cultivate relationships with scholars across the university, and relished their wide-ranging discussions as an essential part of his ongoing education. While he impressed many of his colleagues with his lively curiosity and breadth of knowledge—not to mention, for a chemist, a “bantering sense of humor”—what people liked best about Conant was his “straightness,” commented John Finley, a Harvard classics professor and close friend, “differences in age and position meant nothing.”

  They soon discovered his wife was quite the opposite. Conscious of the need to “do my bit as a Harvard lady,” Patty tended to lord it over newcomers, playing up her status as an important and sought-after hostess to such a degree that they often decided her hospitality was something they could do without. She could be waspish in regard to the slim pickings among her fellow faculty wives, disparaging the guests at one ladies’ luncheon as dowdy and pitifully dull, a collection of “conservative and parrot-minded females, much like those one can see anywhere.” Her intellectual snobbery was such that she looked down on professors from other parts of the country, and frequently expressed a horror of their common or “vulgar” standards. Even Conant’s old friend Ken Murdock, an English literature instructor at Harvard and frequenter of the Shop Club, found her to be a handful.<
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  Fortunately, as Conant’s fame spread, he received countless offers to visit other universities, and both he and Patty jumped at the chance to escape the sometimes suffocating confines of Cambridge. The first of these opportunities came quite unexpectedly in 1924, when his old friend Roger Adams fell ill and asked Conant if he could take over the summer course in organic chemistry he had promised to teach at Berkeley. Eager to gain “a wider view of the American scene,” Conant, who had never been west of the Mississippi, accepted with alacrity. The summer school was renowned for its international character, and they soon found themselves hobnobbing with famous European scholars who were participating in the six-week session. Conant felt “too shy” at first to join in, but gradually gained confidence and learned to hold his own in the cosmopolitan atmosphere.

  The most memorable part of the trip was their excursion to Yosemite National Park. His Berkeley colleague Joel Hildebrand was an enthusiastic outdoorsman, and like many of the faculty an active member of the Sierra Club, founded by the legendary conservationist John Muir. Hildebrand organized a small climbing party, and they spent a week hiking through the Sierra Nevada Mountains. After so many years sequestered in his laboratory, Conant reveled in the opportunity to immerse himself in nature. He loved the height and scale of the landscape, and the lure of the far horizons. The ease and intoxicating freedom of the months out west whet his appetite for further adventures.