Zalman Mordecai Shapiro (born in Canton, Ohio, to parents Abraham Shapiro and Minnie (née Pinck) Shapiro) was a pioneering nuclear chemist and pro-Israel activist. He graduated as valedictorian from Passaic High School in 1938 and attended Johns Hopkins University, earning a B.A. (1942), M.A. (1945), and Ph.D. in chemistry (1948). In 1945, he married Evelyn Greenberg, with whom he had three children: Joshua, Ezra, and Deborah Shapiro; the couple was honored in 2008 for over 60 years of Jewish community service.

Post-education, Shapiro relocated to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he worked at Westinghouse Electric Corporation and Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory, contributing to fuel development for the Shippingport Atomic Power Station (the world's first commercial nuclear power plant) and the reactor powering the USS Nautilus (the first nuclear-powered submarine). In 1957, he founded the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation (NUMEC) in Apollo, Pennsylvania, to advance nuclear fuel processing methods; NUMEC became the first private company to supply fuel elements for commercial reactors and provided consulting to nuclear firms. He served as NUMEC's president and, in 1970, as vice president of research and development at Berylco Industries, Inc. An inventor with 15 U.S. patents, including US Patent 7,547,358 (2009) for a diamond deposition system, Shapiro received awards such as Distinguished Alumnus from Johns Hopkins University (2002), Honorary Fellow from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology (1988), and a nomination for the National Medal of Technology and Innovation (not awarded).

A prominent pro-Israel activist, Shapiro served as president of the Zionist Organization of America in Pittsburgh. He died in Pittsburgh's Oakland neighborhood.

Shapiro was a central figure in the NUMEC affair, involving the disappearance of approximately 269 kg (593 lb) of highly enriched uranium (HEU) from the 1960s—suspected by some of diversion to Israel's nuclear weapons program (enough for several bombs), marking the largest HEU inventory loss among U.S. commercial sites. Investigated for over 15 years by the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), FBI, GAO, and Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the case included a 1968 visit to NUMEC by four Israeli agents (including Rafi Eitan of LAKAM). NUMEC paid the AEC $834,000 for shortfalls; later probes after the 1974 sale to Babcock & Wilcox attributed some losses to contamination and residues, though the NRC could not rule out diversion. Shapiro denied wrongdoing, attributing discrepancies to normal processing complexities; Seymour Hersh's 1991 book The Samson Option concluded no diversion occurred, with material dispersed into the environment and plant infrastructure.