James T. Ramey

James Thomas Ramey (December 5, 1914 – August 28, 2010) was an American lawyer, government official, and expert on the applications of nuclear technology. Ramey served as one of the five commissioners of the United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) from 1962 to 1973, the longest tenure of any AEC commissioner. He was married to the noted endocrinologist, physiologist and feminist Estelle Ramey.

Biography Ramey was born in December 1914 in Eddyville, Kentucky, U.S. but grew up in Chicago. He graduated from Amherst College in Massachusetts in 1937, before completing an LL.B. in 1941 from Columbia University in New York City. In 1938 he met Estelle Rubin, who was a doctorate student in chemistry at Columbia and in 1941 they married. They went on to have two children together. In 1941 he began working as a senior attorney for the federally owned electric utility corporation Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) in Knoxville.

Atomic Energy Commission In 1946 Ramey's boss David Lilienthal left the TVA to become chair of the United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and in 1947 Lilienthal recruited Ramey as an assistant general counsel in the AEC's Chicago operations office. Ramey began applying his experience gained at the TVA to write a new, more flexible contract between the AEC and Westinghouse Electric Corporation who would be building a reactor for the world's first nuclear powered submarine. The contract became a model for subsequent AEC contracts. Ramey was later promoted to principal administrative officer of the AEC's Chicago operations office. Ramey used his position on the AEC to be a strong advocate for civilian nuclear applications such as nuclear power, medicine and desalination.

Later life After his AEC commissioner term came to an end in 1973, Ramey worked as a vice-president of the engineering company Stone & Webster in Massachusetts. Ramey died August 28, 2010, in Suburban Hospital, Bethesda, Maryland, aged 95 from complications from pneumonia. He was survived by his two children.