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

Jackie Peterson

Hanford, WA

Jackie Peterson is an independent curator and exhibit developer in Seattle, Washington.  Peterson earned her bachelor degrees in English and History from Georgetown University and a master’s degree in Museum Studies from New York University.

Tom Foulds

Hanford, WA

Tom Foulds is an attorney who represented plaintiffs, or Downwinders, in the Hanford Nuclear Reservation Litigation.

Enrico Fermi

Chicago, IL

Enrico Fermi (1901-1954) was an Italian physicist and recipient of the 1938 Nobel Prize in Physics.   In 1942, Fermi relocated to the Chicago Met Lab, where he built an experimental reactor pile under Stagg Field at the University of Chicago.

Russell McNutt

Manhattan, NY

Russell McNutt (1914-2008) was a civil engineer for the Kellex Corporation and Soviet atomic spy.  Both studying engineering in New York, McNutt befriended Julius Rosenberg, one of the most well-known Soviet spies and recruiters.