At Harvard University he graduated in 1931 with a master's degree and in 1933 with a Ph.D. His doctoral dissertation was supervised by William H. Weston Jr.[1] As a postdoc supported by a Traveling Fellowship from Harvard, Conant studied from 1933 to 1934 at the Institut Pasteur with Maurice Langeron and Paul Guerra and also spent some time with Raymond Sabouraud.
[2][1] In 1944 he also had postdoctoral training at Rio de Janeiro's Oswaldo Cruz Foundation and at the University of São Paulo.
[2] With 4 physicians from Duke University Medical School, he published in 1944 the requested textbook under the title Manual of Clinical Mycology.
[7] Conant became a professor at the Duke University Medical School and from 1958 to 1968 chaired of the Department of Microbiology.
[2] In 1930, Norman F. Conant married Sylvia Clare Nute (1910–1996), who was a student at Bates College.