Biography

He received a law degree from Harvard in 1960, then joined his family's Indianapolis law firm. He was appointed state deputy attorney general and was counsel with the Indiana Board of Health, where he took legal action against companies polluting rivers and lakes.

He attended Princeton University, where he was an inattentive student. To instill some discipline, his father, who was chairman of the local draft board, got his own son drafted. He returned to Princeton after two years in the Army and graduated in 1957.

He was the first administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. During his first three-year tenure, cities were required to adopt anti-pollution laws, automakers were held to strict emissions standards, and DDT was banned. In 1983, he was vice president of legal affairs for Weyerhaeuser when President Reagan asked him to return as EPA administrator. The previous director had asked Congress to cut the EPA's budget, eliminating jobs and halting enforcement work. Ruckelshaus improved the agency's image and morale.

In 1973, he was named acting FBI director and then deputy attorney general under AG Elliot Richardson. He refused to obey President Nixon's order to fire Archibald Cox, the special prosecutor investigating the Watergate break-in, and resigned (as had Richardson before him).