Norman Rasmussen

Norman Carl Rasmussen was an American physicist and nuclear engineer, born November 12, 1927 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and died July 18, 2003, who founded the discipline of probabilistic risk assessment for nuclear power. After earning a physics doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1956, he spent most of his career in the nuclear engineering department there, chairing it from 1975 to 1981. In the early 1970s he directed the Reactor Safety Study, known by its report number WASH-1400, the first attempt to systematically calculate the probability and consequences of nuclear reactor accidents rather than relying on the deterministic worst-case methods used before it; the study established probabilistic risk assessment as a formal engineering discipline and earned him recognition as its founder. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1977 and the National Academy of Sciences in 1979, served a six-year term on the National Science Board during the Reagan administration, and received the Enrico Fermi Award in 1985 for his pioneering contributions to risk assessment techniques.