Nuclear Museum Logo
Nuclear Museum Logo

National Museum of Nuclear Science & History

Jennet Conant is a bestselling American author and journalist. She is the granddaughter of Manhattan Project administrator James B. Conant and has written extensively on the Manhattan Project and some of its most prominent figures.

Conant was born in Seoul, South Korea. She graduated from Bryn Mawr College with a B.A. in Political Theory, and double-majored in Philosophy at Haverford College. She received a master’s degree from Columbia University’s School of Journalism. Conant worked at Newsweek for seven years and has also written for GQ, Esquire, Vanity Fair and the New York Times.

She is the author of five books on World War II: Tuxedo Park: A Wall Street Tycoon and the Secret Palace of Science That Changed the Course of World War II (2002); 109 East Palace: Robert Oppenheimer and the Secret City of Los Alamos (2005); The Irregulars: Roald Dahl and the British Spy Ring in Wartime Washington (2008); A Covert Affair: Julia Child and Paul Child in the OSS (2011); and Man of the Hour: James B. Conant, Warrior Scientist (2017).

Conant is a member of AHF’s Advisory Committee.

Related Profiles

Mitsugi Moriguchi

Japan

Mitsugi Moriguchi, born in Nagasaki, Japan, is a hibakusha (atomic bomb survivor). He was nine years old when the US dropped the “Fat Man” bomb on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945.

Kennette Benedict

Chicago, IL

Kennette Benedict is an American political scientist. She is currently a senior advisor to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and is a lecturer at the University of Chicago.

Richard Yalman

Manhattan, NY

Richard Yalman was a member of the Special Engineer Detachment and worked on polonium separation at the top-secret laboratories in Dayton, Ohio during the Manhattan Project.

Rebecca Erbelding

Washington, DC

Dr. Rebecca Erbelding is a historian of American responses to the Holocaust. Erbelding is the author of the forthcoming book, Rescue Board: The Untold Story of America’s Efforts to Save the Jews of Europe, and currently an archivist and curator at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.