Hyman G. Rickover

Hyman G. Rickover was a United States Navy admiral known as the father of the nuclear navy, who directed the design and construction of the worlds first nuclear-powered submarine, USS Nautilus, launched in 1954, and drove the reactor program that put nuclear propulsion into dozens of American submarines and surface ships. He also oversaw development of the Shippingport Atomic Power Station in Pennsylvania, which began operating in 1957 as the first full-scale nuclear power plant in the United States built primarily to generate civilian electricity. Rickover insisted on exacting engineering discipline and personal accountability throughout the nuclear program, a culture of safety that shaped how the entire nuclear power industry, civilian and military, would come to operate reactors. He served on active duty for over six decades, longer than any other officer in American naval history, remaining the dominant figure in American naval reactor policy from the 1940s into the 1980s.