(41 of 41)
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Pete Wilson, 40. An effective opponent of unchecked urban sprawl, Wilson swept into the San Diego mayor's office in 1971 on an antidevelopment campaign that some fellow Republicans regarded lightly. Reversing his adopted city's boom-minded policies, he led the city council to impose strict curbs on San Diego's growth, raise bond issues for parks, and activate a plan to revitalize the downtown. Born in Lake Forest, Ill., Wilson attended Yale and won a law degree from the University of California. Elected to the first of three terms in the California assembly in 1966, he was named Republican whip in his first term—an unprecedented honor.
198
Thomas Wyman, 44. Following complaints from black militants, Polaroid Corp.'s senior vice president and general manager developed a widely emulated policy for his firm's South African operation that includes a black education foundation and executive training. "We may not know for 25 years whether our pathetic and uncertain efforts will have any effect," admits the thoughtful St. Louis-born Wyman, who is widely regarded as heir ap parent to Polaroid Founder Edwin Land. A Phi Beta Kappa English major at Amherst, Wyman worked in the Nestlé Co.'s new products division, where he was concerned with foreign acquisitions, now keeps close watch over Polaroid's fast-growing foreign sales.
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Andrew J. Young Jr., 42. In 1970 he was the first black man in 102 years to win a Democratic nomination for Congress from the South. Failing in that bid, he headed Atlanta's Community Relations Commission before making it to Washington in 1973 as Georgia's first black Representative since 1871. A New Orleans native and alumnus of Howard University and Hartford Theological Seminary, Young is a minister in the United Church of Christ who has held pastorates in Alabama and Georgia. For many years he was one of Martin Luther King Jr.'s top lieutenants in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
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Norton D. Zinder, 45, an eminent microbiologist and geneticist, is also a tree shaker in the politics of science. Chairing a committee of scientists assessing the National Cancer Institute's virus research, Zinder helped draft a report that prompted a major reorganization of the program. A native of New York City, he went from Columbia to graduate work at the University of Wisconsin, where he and Nobelist Joshua Lederberg co-discovered transduction—the process by which a virus deserts its home cell and invades a new one, often altering the new cell's genetic profile. Zinder, an associate editor of Virology, researches and teaches graduate students at New York's Rockefeller University.