Zalman Shapiro

Zalman Mordecai Shapiro (12 May 1920 – 16 July 2016) was an American chemist and inventor. He received 15 patents, including a 2009 patent on a process to make commercial production of diamonds cheaper, and played a key role in the development of the reactor that powered the world's first nuclear powered submarine, the Nautilus.

Shapiro was born in Canton, Ohio, on 12 May 1920 to Abraham and Minnie (née Pinck) Shapiro. He graduated from Passaic High School in New Jersey as the valedictorian in 1938. He attended Johns Hopkins University, earning B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees in 1942, 1945, and 1948, respectively.

After completing his education, Shapiro moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and began a career in engineering and chemistry. He worked for Westinghouse Electric and the Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory, where he worked on developing the fuel for the first commercial nuclear power plant, the Shippingport Atomic Power Station. He founded Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corp. (NUMEC) in Apollo, Pennsylvania in 1957 to develop improved methods of processing nuclear fuel.

NUMEC began by doing consulting work for companies in the nuclear field, and it was the first company able to provide fuel that could be used for nuclear reactors. After the company was awarded a contract to process enriched uranium, it was told to inventory its uranium. The inventory came up short, and after a series of efforts to search and recover the material from the factory and its disposal site, the company paid $834,000 to the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) for the missing uranium.

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