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Nixon was born in Yorba Linda, California on January 9, 1913. He graduated from Duke University School of Law in 1937, and practiced law in California. He and his wife Pat moved to Washington to work for the federal government in 1942. Later that year he served in the United States Navy during World War II as a logistics officer in the South Pacific and commanded cargo hauling units. He did not see any combat.
Nixon was elected to the House of Representatives in 1946 and to the Senate in 1950. His involvement in the case of Alger Hiss earned him a reputation as a rabid anti-communist and he was chosen to be the running mate of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Republican Party presidential nominee in the 1952 election. Nixon served for eight years as vice president.
He waged an unsuccessful presidential campaign in 1960, narrowly losing to John F. Kennedy, and two years later he lost a race for Governor of California in 1962. Following that defeat he told reporters "you won't have Dick Nixon to kick around any more" but he was wrong. In 1968, he ran again for the presidency and was elected, defeating Hubert H. Humphrey.
Nixon initially escalated the war in Vietnam, and secretly authorized bombing raids on North Vietnamese troops inside of neighboring Cambodia. But he subsequently ended US involvement in 1973. Nixon's visit to the People's Republic of China in 1972 opened diplomatic relations between the two nations, and he negotiated the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with the Soviet Union the same year. Domestically, his administration imposed wage and price controls, enforced desegregation of Southern schools and established the Environmental Protection Agency. Though he was President when Apollo 11 landed on the moon, he scaled back manned space exploration. He was reelected by a landslide in 1972.
Nixon's second term saw the resignation of his vice president, Spiro Agnew, and a continuing series of revelations about the involvement of the Committee to Re-Elect the President with the Watergate break-in and Nixon's knowledge of a cover-up. The scandal cost Nixon much of his political support, and on August 9, 1974, he resigned in the face of almost certain impeachment and removal from office. After his resignation, he was controversially issued a pardon by his successor, Gerald Ford.
In retirement, Nixon's work authoring several books and undertaking many foreign trips helped to rehabilitate his public image as an elder statesman.
Nixon suffered a severe stroke on April 18, 1994, while preparing to eat dinner in his Park Ridge, New Jersey home. A blood clot had formed in an upper chamber of his heart, broken off, and traveled to his brain. He was taken to New York Hospital–Cornell Medical Center in Manhattan, initially alert but unable to speak or to move his right arm or leg. Damage to the brain caused swelling (cerebral edema), and Nixon slipped into a deep coma. He died at 9:08 p.m. on April 22, 1994, with his daughters Julie and Tricia at his bedside. He was 81 years old.