Ted Rockwell (1922–2013)

Abstract

Theodore “Ted” Rockwell was an amazing man, great friend, and a Full Member of the SSE. While best known to the world as a nuclear energy pioneer, he was intensely interested in spiritual matters and psychic research. For decades he successfully straddled both worlds and loved to “comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable.” The latter meant he frequently raised questions that often tended to bother conventional scientists.

For more than 65 years he worked in nuclear technology, and was a founding officer of the nuclear engineering firm MPR Associates, Inc. (he was the R), and of Radiation, Science, and Health, Inc. During World War II, Ted worked at the Manhattan atomic bomb project in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Continuing with the U.S. Navy in a civilian capacity after World War II, from 1949 to 1964 he worked at Naval Reactors Headquarters. The last 10 years of that assignment Ted served as Technical Director of Admiral Rickover’s program to build the nuclear Navy, including the design, building, and commissioning of the USS Nautilus, the world’s first nuclear-powered submarine. He also served as Director of President Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace Program. There he was selected as one of the 13 official U.S. presentation volumes at the 1958 Atoms for Peace Conference in Geneva. Ted was instrumental in declassifying much of the relevant nuclear technology, and building the world’s first commercial atomic power station at Shippingport, Pennsylvania. Those efforts led to the World Nuclear Association Award for Distinguished Contribution to the Peaceful Worldwide Use of Nuclear Energy.