World: TEN FOR THE FUTURE

• Share

THROUGHOUT its history, Britain has always managed to find the rare men of courage and invention to carry it through crises of war and peace. Today's happy few are not united by politics, class or a common ideology, but share independence of mind, impatience with worn-out formulas, and a dedicated eagerness to shape the future. Some of the pacemakers:

Educator John Vaizey, 33, spent nearly a dozen years in hospitals with osteomyelitis, but managed to reach Cambridge via a scholarship. Currently an economics don at Oxford, he has written five trail-blazing books on education. Vaizey eloquently advocates reform of an educational system that he says "is a reflection of the substantial inequalities of the English class system."

Industrialist Frank Kearton, 51, managing director of Courtaulds, Ltd., has boosted profits 25% in the last six months. Balding, bespectacled Kearton took a First in natural science at Oxford, flies 100,000 miles annually on Courtaulds business (which includes building four textile plants in Russia), and everywhere plugs his credo: "Make fiber cheaper than anyone else in the world, and don't market it until you can. Then you damned well get up, get out and sell, sell, sell."

Playwright Robert Bolt, 38, has scored on the stage with his prizewinning A Man for All Seasons and on film with his script for Lawrence of Arabia. The son of a small furniture-shop owner, Bolt followed the scholarship route to university, cleaned latrines for the R.A.F., and was a totally unhappy schoolteacher before turning to writing. By any definition a concerned man, Bolt has been jailed for his ban-the-bomb convictions and argues, "Much ink, perhaps some blood, will flow before we arrive at a genuinely modern and credible vision of what a human person is. But I think any artist not in some way engaged upon that task might as well pack up and go home."

Scientist Francis Crick, 46, one of four Britons who last December received Nobel prizes for their contributions to medicine and chemistry. Dr. Crick, together with British Colleague Dr. Maurice Wilkins and U.S. Biologist Dr. James Watson, successfully postulated the infinitely complex molecular structure of DNA, which carries the determining genetic code from generation to generation. Tall, worldly and vaguely Edwardian, Crick is an avowed atheist who once resigned a Cambridge fellowship when his college announced plans to build a chapel. (''Why should I support the propagation of an error?") He is a brilliant, nonstop talker, was trained as a crystallographer before switching to biology. Crick's Who's Who biography lists his recreation as: "Conversation, especially with pretty women."

Industrialist Sir Leon Bagrit, 60, believes that automation "is a matter of life and death to this country. It is to the second industrial revolution what the harnessing of power was to the first. Because we were the first in adopting new techniques 150 years ago, we have benefited ever since." Born of Russian-Jewish parents in Kiev, Sir Leon studied at London University, formed his own company in 1935, and since the war has headed the revamped firm of Elliott-Automation Ltd., which, outside the U.S., is the largest computer manufacturer in the world.