Printable Version The biographies for all of the former Commissioners in this section are the official ones they used during their Commission terms. Edward A. Mason, a nuclear engineer and educator, was appointed by President Ford to a three-year term as a member of the first Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). He assumed his duties on January 19, 1975, when the NRC was formally established. At the time of his nomination to the Commission in December 1974, Dr. Mason was Professor and Head of the Department of Nuclear Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He had been a member of the nuclear engineering faculty since 1957. From 1953 to 1957, he was Director of Research at Ionics, Inc., Cambridge, Massachusetts. Dr. Mason previously taught at M.I.T. as Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering from 1950 to 1953. He also served as Senior Design Engineer at Oak Ridge (Tennessee) National Laboratory during 1957 and also directed a study there in 1967 on agro-industrial complexes. He served in the U.S. Navy during World War II. Dr. Mason received a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Rochester in 1945. He also holds Master of Science and Doctor of Science degrees from M.I.T. He was a National Science Foundation Senior Postdoctoral Fellow from 1965 to 1966 while he carried out research at the European Community Nuclear Research Center at Ispra, Italy. He served as a member of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission's Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards from 1972 until January 1975; he was Vice Chairman in 1974. Dr. Mason is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the New York Academy of Sciences, and is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Nuclear Society and the American Institute of Chemists. He is a member of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, the American Chemical Society, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Dr. Mason is also a member of Tau Beta Pi, the honorary engineering society; Sigma Xi, the honorary scientific society, and Phi Betta Kappa, the honorary humanities society. January 1976 |