Existing comment:
Notable Jews at the Naval Academy:
Jews have been part of the United States Naval Academy from its earliest days, advancing its honor and reputation at students, as graduates, and as members of its faculty and staff. They have served, and led, in every war since the founding of the Academy.
The first identifiable Jew at the Academy was Raphael Jacob Moses, Jr., who entered in 1860 but left to join the Confederate military. His son, Lawrence Henry Moses, graduated in 1890. Family members Stanford, William, Charles, and Edward Moses attended the Academy as well.
Adolph Marix, USNA 1868, commanded the battleship Maine until a few weeks before it exploded in Havava Harbor in 1898, sparking the Spanish-American War. Marix was appointed [and] headed the commission that investigated the explosion.
[From Wikipedia article on the Spanish-American War: The U.S. Navy's investigation, made public on March 28, concluded that the ship's powder magazines were ignited when an external explosion was set off under the ship's hull. This report poured fuel on popular indignation in the U.S., making the war inevitable.Spain's investigation came to the opposite conclusion: that the explosion originated within the ship. Other investigations in later years came to various contradictory conclusions, but had no bearing on the coming of the war. In 1974, Admiral Hyman George Rickover had his staff look at the documents and concluded there was an internal explosion. A study commissioned by National Geographic magazine in 1999, using AME computer modelling, stated that the explosion could have been caused by a mine, but no definitive evidence was found.]
In 1907, Albert A. Michelson, USNA 1873, became the first American to win a Nobel Prize in science for measuring the speed of light while working as a faculty member at the Academy. His research later made possible Albert Einstein's theory of relativity.
Hyman Rickover, USNA 1922, served longer than any other officer in the history of the United States Navy. Known as [the] "Father of the Nuclear Navy," Rickover's vision of the potential for nuclear energy to allow submarines and battleships to cruise for extended periods without refueling, helped make the United States a world military power.
After active duty in the Pacific theater, Paul N. Shulman, USNA 1944, resigned his commission to help establish the state of Israel. In 1948, David Ben-Gurion, Prime Minister of the newly-declared nation, asked Shulman to command its small but effective Navy as Israel struggled for its very survival.
Since World War II, more distinguished Jewish USNA graduates have served their nation than can be listed. Some of their stories are told in this case. |