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. == References ==