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

Curtiss Brennan

Santa Fe, NM

Curtiss Brennan is an American archaeologist who received his PhD in 1978. In the 1970s, he and his wife, Mary, moved next door to Dorothy McKibbin, striking up a friendship with her and eventually becoming the owners of her home when she passed away.

Rudolf Peierls

United Kingdom

Sir Rudolf Peierls (1907-1995) was a German-born British physicist. In March 1940, Peierls and fellow collegue Otto Frisch co-authored the Frisch-Peierls memorandum, the first technical exposition of a practical atomic weapon.

Robert “Bo” Jacobs

Japan

Robert “Bo” Jacobs is an American historian of nuclear technologies and radiation technopolitics.

Milton Burton

Chicago, IL

Milton Burton was the Chief of Radiation Chemistry in the Metallurgical Laboratory (“Met Lab”) at the University of Chicago and later at Oak Ridge during the Manhattan Project.