Background
He was born in Middletown, Conn., Apr. 11, 1893.
He was born in Middletown, Conn., Apr. 11, 1893.
He was educated at the Groton School.
He graduated from Yale University in 1915, and received his law degree from Harvard University in 1918.
During World War I he served as an ensign in the U.S. Navy and from 1919 to 1921 was secretary to Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis. He practiced law in Washington, D.C., from 1921 until President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed him undersecretary of the Treasury, on May 19, 1933. Because of his opposition to the gold-purchase plan, he resigned the following November 15 and resumed his law practice. In 1939-1940 he headed a committee to study the operation of administrative bureaus in the federal government. Acheson was appointed assistant secretary of state in 1941, and in 1945 he was appointed undersecretary of state. In 1946, as chairman of a special committee to prepare a plan for the international control of atomic energy, he wrote the Acheson-Lilienthal report. He resigned as undersecretary of state, June 30, 1947, and resumed his law practice. On Jan. 7, 1949, Acheson was appointed secretary of state to succeed General George C. Marshall. Earlier, Acheson had promoted UNRRA and the Bretton Woods Conference and he had also been closely involved in the creation of the Marshall Plan. After 1946, his attitude toward the Soviet Union had changed from one of conciliation to one of containment. As secretary, he was instrumental in creating the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949-1950 and in engineering the Japanese peace treaty, signed in 1951. He was also responsible for building up the European Defense Community and for implementing U.S. policy in the Korean War. He retired as secretary of state on Jan. 20, 1953. He served as a foreign policy adviser to President John F. Kennedy. Acheson's writings include A Democrat Looks at His Party (1955), A Citizen Looks at Congress (1957), Sketches from Life of Men I Have Known (1961), and Morning and Noon (1965). He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1970 for his Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (1969). Acheson died at Sandy Springs, Md., on Oct. 12, 1971.