PERSONNEL: Into Wilson’s Shoes

To succeed Charles E. Wilson, who resigned to take over as director of the new Office of Defense Mobilization (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS), General Electric’s directors last week picked Executive Vice President Ralph J. Cordiner, 50.

Short, greying Ralph Cordiner worked his way through Whitman College selling electric appliances in his home town of Walla Walla, Wash. He joined a G.E. Pacific Coast subsidiary in 1922 and worked his way up. In 1938, he succeeded Charlie Wilson as manager of G.E.’s Appliance and Merchandise Department, was elected vice president in February 1945 after serving as vice chairman of the War Production Board. Since then, Cordiner has been Charlie Wilson’s right-hand man in planning and carrying out G.E.’s postwar expansion.