Ronald G. Nelson grew up on a Central Minnesota dairy farm where he earned his high school and junior college degrees as the salutatorian in both. He attended the University of Minnesota to earn a BS in geological engineering and an MS in geology with a minor in physical chemistry. He began his career in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Tulsa, Oklahoma, in exploration and research and development before moving to Omaha, Nebraska. In 1968, he moved with his family to Libya and Holland as a reservoir simulation expert. He joined Conoco North Sea in London in 1974 where he was manager of planning and economics. There he invented the Tension Leg Platform used to exploit deepwater oil and gas fields all over the world. He introduced Miscible Gas Injection to recover up to 80 percent of the oil in the Statfjord Field on the UK-Norway border in the North Sea. He consulted worldwide for fifteen years until his retirement in 2000.