Memorial Tribute to Ted Rockwell (2013)

Annually members of the National Academy of Engineers decide on candidate members based on significance of their contributions to engineering and also elect engineers to recognized as memorial tributes. This is the tribute written by Ted Rockwell (NRHQ 1949 - 1964).

In 1949 he was recruited by then Captain Hyman Rickover to work in the nascent Naval Nuclear Power Program, and in 1954 he became technical director at Naval Reactors, responsible to Admiral Rickover for developing criteria, procedures, and facilities for safe operation of the nuclear Navy as well as for the first commercial nuclear power plant at Shippingport, Pennsylvania.

In 1964 he left Naval Reactors and with two colleagues founded MPR Associates, with the prime objective of achieving engineering excellence applied to major problems.

Ted was a prolific writer and speaker on technical topics, wrote popular interest articles, and established a blog, "Learning about Energy." He edited the Reactor Shielding Manual, the fundamental reference used worldwide since its initial publication in 1956. He also authored two nonfiction books—The Rickover Effect: How One Man Made a Difference (Naval Institute Press, 1992) and Creating the New World: Stories and Images from the Dawn of the Atomic Age (AuthorHouse, 2003)—and a novel. The Virtual Librarian: A Tale of Alternate Realities (coauthored with his son Bob; iUniverse, 2007).

Rockwell was elected as a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2001.