Conant (James Bryant) is born in Dorchester.

The son of James and Jennett (Bryant) Conant, James Conan Bryant grows up at 77 Bailey Street, attends the Bailey and Pierce schools, graduates from Roxbury Latin and Harvard College, and receives a Ph.D. from Harvard University. He serves as a major in a unit that develops poisonous gas in World War I, returns to Boston and marries Grace Richards in 1920, and becomes a professor and then president of Harvard University (1933*-1953), and serves as U.S. High Commissioner for Germany (1953-55), and Ambassador to West German (1955-57). Described by Richard Norton Smith as, “The coldest of cold warriors,” Conant oversees development of the atomic bomb, then becomes a leading voice for nuclear disarmament and higher education reform. He dies in Hanover, New Hampshire, on February 11, 1978, and is buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery.