13-01  Theodore Rockwell

He was given Distinguished Service Medals by the Navy and the US Atomic Energy Com­mission and the first “Lifetime Contribution Award, henceforth known as the Rockwell Award,” by the American Nuclear Society.  He has several patents, includ­ing one listed in “a selection of [27] landmark US atomic energy patents from all the patents issued to date.”   From 1965 to 1968, he was a Re­search Associate with the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, in con­nection with nuclear proliferation policy research.  He was Chairman of the Atomic Industrial Forum's Reactor Safety Task Force (1966-72), consul­tant to the Joint Congres­sional Committee on Atomic Energy (1967), and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering.. He was recently nominated to be the first NAE Sigma Xi Distinguished Lecturer.

            He is editor of The Reactor Shielding Design Manual published separately by GPO, McGraw-Hill and Van Nostrand (1956), and author of The Rickover Effect: How One Man Made a Difference, (Naval Institute Press, 1992, and John Wiley, 1995), and co-author of Arms Control Agreements: Designs for Verification (Johns Hopkins Press, 1968), used in US-USSR talks at the White House.  He co-authored The Shippingport Pressurized Water Reactor ( Addison-Wesley) cited by the American Library Association as “one of the best technical books of 1958,” and selected as an official US presentation volume at the 1958 Atoms for Peace Conference at Geneva.  He has written numerous books, technical papers and popular articles, including “Frontier Life Among the Atom Splitters” (SatEvePost, Dec 1, 1945), “Bred for Fury,” (first color stroboflash pic­tures of fighting cocks in action; True, July 1946), “Heresy, Excom­munication and Other Weeds in the Garden of Science” (New Realities, Dec 1981), and “Vice Versa,” three one-act plays professionally produced as a staged reading at Washington’s Source Theater.

            He is listed in: Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in the World, World Who’s Who in Science from Antiquity to Present, International Who’s Who in Engineering, American Men and Women of Science, Dictionary of International Biography, The Blue Book, World Who’s Who of Authors, Who’s Who in Theology and Science, Contemporary Authors, etc. His works have been translated into German, Dutch, Russian, Chinese, Korean and Japanese.

            The Rickover Effect has recently been republished by the Authors Guild through iUniverse.  His latest book is Creating the New World: Stories & Images from the Dawn of the Atomic Age, available through 1stBooks Library.  He is vice president and a founding director of Radiation, Science & Health, Inc., an international public interest organization of independent radiation experts committed to bringing radiation policy into line with scientific data and theory.

His website is: http://members.authorsguild.net/tedrockwell

Getting Educated

 As part of the effort of scientists and engineers to edu­cate them­selves in the rapidly-changing politics of nuclear energy after Hiroshima, a series of Town Meetings led by noted speakers was held in the Oak Ridge high-school auditorium, the only such facility in town.   These were stereotypical American town meetings in that each citizen who wished to comment on the subject at hand was given respectful at­tention and time to do so.   But the meetings were unique in the global sweep of the is­sues covered.   They were memorable affairs, and each had its own tone and power.   Ely Culbertson, for example, surprised most of us by saying he had spent much of his early life in foreign jails as a political prisoner, and that he had devoted much of that time to studying possible forms of world govern­ment.   He said he had created the card game contract bridge as a bet with a psychologist friend that he could invent a game that would sweep the world.   To him it was an experiment in mass psychology, nothing more, and it no longer occu­pied his mind.   When asked long and rambling questions, he would repeat them verbatim, then paraphrase them into crisply-worded questions, pause a moment, and answer with similar brisk clar­ity.   He had a detailed plan of ac­tion, and specific answers to every question.   It was a dazzling demonstration of a powerful mind at work, and the entire hall was entranced.

The next meeting featured the noted writer and editor Norman Cousins, a totally different phenomenon.   My main recollection from that meeting was the emotional intensity that he built up, in stark contrast to the Culbertson meeting.   I remember a woman stepping out into the aisle and walking toward him, her arms outstretched, tears running down her cheeks, sobbing, “But what can I  do, Mr.  Cousins? What can I  do?”  To which he replied, with equal fervor, “Shout it in the streets!  Knock on doors!  Storm the capitol!”

Charles D.  Coryell, a radiochemist from X-10 and a student of Glenn Seaborg’s, gave a talk to the high­-school stu­dents, and they were sufficiently moved to organize a Youth Coun­cil on the Atomic Crisis (known as “Yak-Ack” among the irreverent).   In short order they managed to get them­selves heard over national radio, had articles in the national press, and were invited by the UN Council of Philadelphia to address groups there with a total audience estimated at 21,000.  

These and other political actions were effective.   When the House tried to load the McMahon bill with onerous amendments, 70,000 letters of protest were received, at a time in history when public participation in the political process was otherwise at a low ebb.   And the process continued for an­other decade.   The Bul­letin of the Atomic Scientists  continues publication to this day, as a widely-read journal of opinion and information.   However, I share the disappointment of Alvin Weinberg, former director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, who wrote in The First Nuclear Era (AIP Press, 1994): 

As so often happens with such organizations, FAS and the Bulletin were gradually captured by anti-nuclear activists.  … I am particularly chagrined that the Bulletin, which under its first editor, Eugene Rabinowitch, saw nuclear energy as a powerful agent for creating material abundance, now seems to view nuclear energy as an abomination.

One of the lessons we learned from lobbying was that the most effec­tive message is one of impending doom.   We were willing to use this tactic to get people’s attention in our effort to achieve civilian control of the atomic energy program—“it’s not just another ordnance project.”   Our card-file of congressmen and others we were lobbying was divided into two categories: scared and unscared, i.e. those we had visited and those we had not yet reached .  But we were quite unprepared for the same tactic to be used against nuclear power in the 1970s and beyond.   Perhaps we had it coming to us.