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Ralph Nader, 40, indicted U.S. automakers (Unsafe at Any Speed) in 1965 and has been rolling ever since. Aided by "Nader's Raiders" —some 28 full-time attorneys and 56 congressional lobbyists, researchers, organizers and others—as well as thousands of volunteers on campuses across the U.S., he has been accused of spreading himself too thin and launching crusades with inadequate preparation. Still, he has turned automobile recalls into a seasonal event, forced the removal of monosodium glutamate from baby foods, spurred creation of a national consumer-protection agency and inspired a host of health and safety measures. Prickly and single-minded but a paradigm of honesty, the reclusive Nader is now battling the spread of nuclear power plants, which he considers unsafe.
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Aryeh Neier, 37. His first name means lion in Hebrew, and as executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, Neier—who is not a lawyer—has been ferocious in seeking out infringements of the Bill of Rights rather than waiting for them to be brought to him. Among the celebrated causes he has championed are legalized abortion, the rights of prisoners and legal equality for women. Born in Berlin and brought to the U.S. by way of London after World War II, Neier earned a degree in industrial labor relations from Cornell. He joined the New York Civil Liberties Union as a field organizer in 1963, became its director two years later, and was named chief of the parent A.C.L.U. in 1970. A controversial activist, Neier called early for the impeachment of Richard Nixon.
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Barbara Newell, 44, president of Wellesley College, is bucking the trend among women's colleges to go coeducational. Newell, who took the helm of the top-rated Massachusetts school in 1972, is in a good position to judge, since her own background includes a B.A. from Vassar (which has since gone coed), and an M.A. and Ph.D. in economics from the University of Wisconsin. In 20 years of teaching economics at Wisconsin, Michigan and Pittsburgh, she rarely found more than a dozen women in her graduate and undergraduate classes. Her conclusion: "Coeducation has increased, rather than lessened, male domination of American higher education."
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Eleanor Holmes Norton, 37, a black graduate of Antioch College and Yale Law School, entered a Manhattan courtroom in 1968 to defend Alabama Governor George Wallace's right to address a political rally in New York City. Her skill in winning the case against John Lindsay's administration so impressed the mayor that two years later he hired her as chairman of the city's Commission on Human Rights. While attacking alleged discrimination from the New York Philharmonic Orchestra to the Board of Education, Norton has survived in her post despite Lindsay's departure. With her growing popularity among New York City's Democrats, she could emerge as a candidate for a major state office.
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Sam Nunn, 35, was already a political veteran when he became the second youngest Senator in the current Congress. The Georgia Democrat, a onetime all-state high school