Identifer: CJF-RFC2015059

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Hyman George Rickover, was born January 27, 1900, in the Jewish ghetto of the city of Makow, located approximately 50 miles north of Warsaw, in what was then a part of Czarist Russia (and now is located in Poland).  At the age of six, he, his mother and sister immigrated to the United States to join his father, and settled in Chicago. 
 
Through congressional connections, his parents secured for their son an acceptance to the United States Naval Academy, located in Annapolis, Maryland, in 1918. He was commissioned an ensign in the United States Navy in 1922. Rickover served on the destroyer USS La Vellette and the battleship USS Nevada before earning a Masters Degree in Electrical Engineering from Columbia University.   His fascination with the, at the time, fledgling submarine service of the US Navy led to the assignment and the command of the US Navy fleet boats S-9 and S-48 from 1929 to 1933. He took command of the USS Finch in 1937.  This would prove to be his last actual fleet command of his career.  After this command, he was appointed as Engineering Duty Officer; this would be the Naval post in which he would serve for the remainder of his naval career. 
 
            Although better known for his nuclear related activities, Hyman Rickover also made major contributions to the Unites States Navy’s success during World War II.  During the war, the experience of the British Navy showed that a naval vessel’s electrical equipment often did not operate properly during or after being subjected to the explosions that occurred during battle.  The United States Navy’s experience in the naval battles in the Pacific also showed that the lack of fireproofing on naval vessels’ electrical equipment was a major problem. 
 
            Rickover pushed the Navy and the shipyards to develop a radically new line of electrical equipment that was not only significantly superior in performance, but was also essentially fireproof and would continue to perform under the severe shock of explosions during combat.  Data obtained by the Navy in Japan after the end of the war showed that the lack of these improvements among our enemy’s naval vessels was a major factor in the outcome of many of the naval battles in the Pacific.
 
            After the war ended, the United States government started a project at the Clinton Laboratory (now known as the Oak Ridge National Laboratory) to develop a nuclear electric generating plant.  The Navy elected to send eight Naval officers to participate in this project.  Realizing the potential that nuclear energy held for the Navy, Rickover applied.  Although he was not initially accepted, he was eventually sent by the Navy to join the project.
 
            As part of the project team, Rickover almost single-handedly convinced the Secretary of the Navy that a nuclear submarine should be built.  Under Rickover's supervision, construction on the world's first nuclear powered submarine, the USS Nautilus, began in 1952.  It became operational on January 17, 1955.  Prior to that time, all submarines had basically been diesel surface ships that could submerge for brief periods and travel at slow speeds.  The new nuclear powered submarine revolutionized naval warfare immediately.
 
Rickover later became Chief of the Naval Reactors Branch of the Atomic Energy Commission and was in charge of the nuclear propulsion division of the Navy's Bureau of Ships.
 
Rickover had a legendary reputation of being extremely unorthodox in his methods and for “riding” his research staff unmercifully. He was known to dress down the heads of his research departments and play mind games with prospective applicants from the Naval Academy who wanted to be part of his nuclear program. 


Even with his unorthodox methods, he exacted an almost fanatical devotion from his staff and a growing number of acolytes. This brashness offended many senior officers above him, and Rickover found himself twice passed over for promotion to the rank of rear admiral. Only through the intervention of his patrons on Capitol Hill, did he finally get promoted.
 
Nevertheless, Rickover's accomplishments remained too monumental to ignore. Throughout his long naval career his numerous decorations included: the Distinguished Service Medal with Gold Star (1946); Legion of Merit with Gold Star (1952); the Egleston Medal Award of Columbia Engineering School Alumni Association (1955); the American Society of Mechanical Engineer’s George Westinghouse Gold Medal (1955); the Cristoforo Columbo Gold Medal (1957); the Michael I. Pupin 100th Anniversary Medal (1958); the Congressional Gold Medal (1959); the Institute of Electrical Engineers’ Golden Omega Award (1959); the Atomic Energy Commission’s Enrico Fermi Award (1965); the National Electrical Manufacturers Association’s Prometheus Award (1965), as well as the title of Honorary Commander of the Military Division of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (1946).  In 1980, President Jimmy Carter, himself a nuclear engineer, naval officer and disciple of Rickover's tenets, presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest non-military honor, to Admiral Rickover. 
 
On January 31, 1982, after 63 years of service to his adopted country under 13 different presidential administrations, Admiral Rickover retired. Because of his unique insight and knowledge, he was declared exempt by Congressional mandate from the mandatory retirement age for senior admirals, allowing his tenure as head of the Navy's nuclear program ran much longer than would ordinarily have been possible.
 
After Rickover’s retirement from the Navy, in 1983 he founded the Center for Excellence in Education, with the goals of nurturing the intellectual and cultural growth of academically talented high school and college students.  CEE's mission is to challenge students and to assist them on a long-term basis to develop the creators, inventors, scientists and leaders of the 21st century.
 
Today the Center still exists and sponsors three free programs for high school students: the Research Science Institute (RSI), the Role Models Project (RMP), and the USA Biology Olympiad. RSI participants represent five continents, and each year CEE program alumni travel as guests of foreign education ministries to promote mutual understanding among the world's future leaders.
 
On July 8, 1986, Rickover passed away and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.  His name is memorialized in the attack submarine USS Hyman G. Rickover (SSN 709) and Rickover Hall at the U.S. Naval Academy.
 
The Congressional Gold Medal was struck at the direction of an Act of the United States Congress in honor and recognition of the accomplishments of Hyman Rickover.  It was designed by the artist Frank Gasparro, and minted by the United States Mint in Washington DC.  It was issued in 1958 in Bronze, with a diameter of 76mm.