1900-1986

American Naval Officer and Engineer

At the end of the Second World War, Hyman Rickover was a relatively obscure officer in the United States Navy. He had very little experience on sea-going commands, had commanded only one auxiliary ship, and had spent most of the war in a support capacity in the United States. After the war, however, at a time when most of his naval academy classmates were retiring, Rickover almost single-handedly built the nuclear navy that, at its peak, would consist of 141 nuclear submarines and over a dozen surface ships—the largest nuclear power program in the world (except for that of the Soviet navy) and the most reliable. To do this, Rickover not only helped design a reliable and compact nuclear reactor, but also set incredibly tough standards for quality control, personnel selection and training, and ship design...