Special Section: 50 Faces for America's Future

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district, which includes a dilapidated, arson-scorched section where she directs a community center. Since taking office she has pushed through the Rhode Island house two housing bills designed to cut down on arson and evictions. Well before Three Mile Island, she initiated legislation that would outlaw nuclear power plants in Rhode Island until waste disposal problems are solved. Says Morancy: "Issues involving the quality of people's lives affect generation after generation."

34. Robert Muller, 34, was an idealistic undergraduate at New York's Hofstra University when he enlisted in the Marines and went to Viet Nam as a lieutenant. In 1969 he was shot in the spine and left paralyzed from the waist down. The disillusioning war and shabby treatment accorded the men who fought it turned him into a crusader. As executive director of the Vietnam Veterans of America, Muller is fighting for jobs, better benefits and respect for the 3 million Americans who served in Southeast Asia. Now a lawyer, he is a moving orator when addressing Americans about the war: "Your guilt, your hang-ups, your uneasiness made it socially unacceptable to mention the fact that we were Viet Nam veterans. We fought hard and we fought well."

35. Mark Ptashne, 39. In 1967 the Harvard molecular biologist detected a molecule, called a "represser," that regulates the way a gene functions, possibly a key in the study of cancer. Ptashne was majoring in philosophy at Reed College in Portland, Ore., when he became fascinated by a theory about represser molecules and switched to chemistry in his senior year. During the Viet Nam War, Ptashne was deeply involved in antiwar politics at Harvard and went to the extent of lecturing at the University of Hanoi. But he became disillusioned with leftist politics in 1976 when some radicals and others tried, unsuccessfully, to force the Cambridge, Mass., city council to deny Harvard and M.I.T. the right to conduct recombinant DNA experiments. Ptashne helped lead the campaign to allow the experiments to take place.

36. Frank Shorter, 31, has often set the pace. At the 1972 Munich Olympics, the Yale graduate became the first American in more than 50 years to win the marathon, and the attention he received helped quicken interest in the running boom. In 1976 Shorter came back to win a silver medal in Montreal. His 140-mile training weeks left him little opportunity to support himself as a lawyer, however, so he challenged the Amateur Athletic Union's rules prohibiting sports-related income. In a precedent-setting case that has helped other athletes, Shorter convinced the A.A.U. that his manufacturing of running gear should not affect his amateur status. Shorter is also drumming up corporate support for amateur athletes. "In the old days the A.A.U. required that an athlete build his name and then retire to reap what benefits he could," says Shorter. That is obviously not his plan: Shorter is training hard to make the 1980 U.S. Olympic team.

37. Eleanor Smeal, 39, took charge of the National Organization for Women (NOW) in 1977, doubled the membership to 100,000 and raised dues and contributions from $700,000 annually to $2.6 million. The first housewife to head NOW, as well as its first full-time paid president, Smeal is a native of Erie, Pa., and a Phi Beta Kappa from Duke University. She discovered feminism