Rickover: Father of the Nuclear Navy

Hyman G. Rickover was not long removed from his Jewish roots in Poland when he graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1922. After a respectable career spent mostly in unglamorous submarine and engineering billets, he took command of the U.S. Navy’s nuclear propulsion program and revived his career, being retired—involuntarily—some thirty years later in early 1982. He was not only the architect of the nuclear Navy but also its builder. In the process, he erected a network of power and influ…