Staying Fit
Think of innovators as gift-givers—their work results in bounty for the rest of us. Some innovators set out to do good; others are simply trying to do well. To succeed takes more than intelligence. It takes persistence, focus, and the sort of insight that comes to the well-prepared mind. Innovators who have passed the half-century mark—such as the brilliant and accomplished people we honor here—represent a particular kind of success. Their careers are long arcs of intense dedication, idea building upon idea. And success has sharpened them. Their reputations secure, many veteran innovators feel freer to take risks. Along with this freedom comes a generosity of spirit, a desire to pass knowledge on. This, of course, is their part in a chain. They acknowledge the debts they owe to their predecessors. They know progress comes in steps. One result of this incremental progress is that new ideas are often underestimated. Thomas Edison was sure that the phonograph would be of use chiefly to stenographers. Who can blame him for not envisioning Sensurround? But our very blindness to the future is part of the magic of new ideas. We live in an era of unprecedented discovery. Any day, one of a thousand developments could radically alter our lives. The thrill and the responsibility of innovation lie in coming to recognize what has been placed, shining, in our hands.
—By Jon Spayde
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* She discovered a hidden fountain of youth
Elizabeth Blackburn, 53
Professor of Biochemistry, University of California, San Francisco
Regular cells divide a finite number of times, then die. But cancer cells are immortal. In 1985, Blackburn discovered why: an enzyme she named telomerase. In theory, to disable the enzyme is to stop cancer. And telomerase might also keep healthy cells alive indefinitely. Blackburn's finding launched a field devoted to altering the cell's life span. Hailed as an ongoing trailblazer, Blackburn is modest: "Nature is much cleverer than I am," she says.
* She reshaped the art of modern sculpture
Louise Bourgeois, 91
Artist
Bourgeois drew from both surrealism and abstract expressionism to create a style that is defiantly her own. Mining memories of a traumatic childhood, she explores themes of sexuality and family drama in room-size installations she calls "cells." With her adventurous use of latex, fabric, and other materials, she has rewritten the rules of sculpture. Recognition came late for Bourgeois, who didn't have a major public commission until 1978. She recently completed one for London's new Tate Modern.
Medicine for the mind: "Art is a guarantee of sanity," Bourgeois once declared. "That is the most important thing I have said."
* He makes peace by believing it possible
Jimmy Carter, 78
Chair, The Carter Center
Jimmy Carter On January 4, 1981, at the First Baptist Church of Washington, D.C., Jimmy Carter taught his last Sunday school class as President of the United States. "Is greatness being a president?" he asked. "An emperor?" His answer, of course, was no, for Jesus taught that "the foundation of greatness is service to others." Last December, when Carter accepted the Nobel Peace Prize and Norwegians greeted him with a torch-light parade in Oslo's winter cold, it was clear that America's 39th president had won the prize for his fidelity to that message.
In his "retirement," Carter has become a citizen of the world. Equipped with a rare mix of spiritual strength, organizational skills, and international experience, he has tackled intractable problems in the world's most volatile places. He has led efforts to eradicate diseases such as guinea worm and river blindness, and directed programs to boost harvests in depleted countries. He has preached religious tolerance and launched an urban rehabilitation program in Atlanta. These endeavors and others pursued under the auspices of the Carter Center he founded with wife, Rosalynn, will stand as his legacy.
A pioneer in election-monitoring techniques, Carter has helped facilitate the transition to democracy in such places as Panama, Haiti, and Nicaragua. He has helped mediate disputes, civil wars, and political transitions in countries including Ethiopia, North Korea, and Bosnia. Why was he invited to these places? Partly because his missionary sensibility implies integrity. Also, Carter disarms dictators and rebel leaders alike with his empathy, lack of pretense, and—as critics see it—his willingness to grant respect even where it might not be merited.
Carter makes it clear that he favors neither side in any dispute and that his sole objective is to end or avert war. Consequently, he will gamble that even brutal dictators have consciences and can be redeemed. He relishes flouting the State Department; it perturbs him that at America's foreign policy bastion the word "peacekeeping" is often followed by "forces." To admirers, Carter is America's global conscience. His detractors see calculated attempts to rehabilitate a mediocre record as president while securing a spot in heaven. But nobody would dispute Carter's unwavering confidence that he can succeed where others failed.
Call it compassionate hubris. If a Georgia peanut farmer could reach the White House, Carter seems to think, why shouldn't he solve a Central American border dispute? As he once told a Bible class, "We'll never know whether something new and wonderful is possible unless we try."
—By Douglas Brinkley
* He liberated jazz
Ornette Coleman, 72
Composer, Musician
Ornette Coleman Bewilderment and hostility greeted the self-taught alto sax player in the 1950s. Coleman's frenetic, soulful improvisations defied all conventions. "I don't know what it is," Dizzy Gillespie sniffed. "But it's not jazz." Others called his music—grounded in a system Coleman dubbed "harmolodics"—an atonal racket. But many of his compositions, such as the magisterial 1972 symphony Skies of America, are now being recognized as masterpieces.
Novelty act: "With Ornette Coleman, jazz established its permanent avant-garde—a 'new' that would always remain new," writes Francis Davis in The Atlantic Monthly.
* They combat sprawl with a new traditionalism
Andres Duany, 53
Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, 52
Principals, Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co., Miami, Florida
These Miami-based architects started out as modernists. But they quickly grew disillusioned with bold, sterile high rises and unwalkable, isolating suburbs. The two began planning towns on a human scale: for example, shops near homes to encourage foot traffic. Their first town, Seaside, Florida, was a stunning success. Since then, Duany and Plater-Zyberk have helped plan more than 200 communities. For each, they study local architecture so they can maintain a sense of place.
Sidetracked: The couple, who were married in 1976, have been too busy to start a family. "I missed the 'mommy track,' " says Plater-Zyberk. "I suppose you could say that our towns are our babies."
Take a virtual tour of the town of Seaside, Fla., that emerged from the architecture of Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk.
* He's still a-changin' with the times
Bob Dylan, 61
Singer/Songwriter
To dwell on his simple three-chord sound and that foghorn of a voice would be missing the point. Because it's not just about the music, it's about the vision. And the continuous process of reinvention. Dylan was the iconic protest singer, but he morphed into a rocker, a country boy, a movie actor, a religious mystic (in turns Christian and Jewish), and most recently, a sage, singing about maturity, loss, mortality—things rock 'n' roll was never built to explore.
"It's not dark yet/But it's getting there," he sings on his critically acclaimed album Time Out Of Mind. Describing Dylan is "like trying to talk about the pyramids," U2's Bono once said.
* She tamed cyberspace
Esther Dyson, 51
Chairman, EDventure Holdings
Often called "Queen of the Internet," Dyson is the computer industry's premier power broker and soothsayer. Her early vision of the Web as an entity free of governmental controls set the tone for the Internet we use today. "People don't understand that all that's on the Internet is other people," Dyson says. Her newsletter, Release 1.0, is required reading for the world's digital elite ("What she writes is what I care about," Bill Gates has said), and for 26 years the industry's heaviest hitters have schmoozed at her exclusive annual PC Forum conference.
* He leads the charge against AIDS and bioterror
Anthony Fauci, 62
Director, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID)
In 1988, angry activists—protesting the federal government's slow response to the AIDS crisis—demonstrated outside Fauci's office, branding him a "murderer." The NIAID director responded not by having them arrested, but by inviting them in. And, he recalls, "to my amazement and gratification, they made an incredible amount of sense." Fauci joined with them to make unprecedented demands on the Food and Drug Administration, including early access to experimental drugs. Since then, he has also devised treatments for several formerly fatal vascular diseases.
"He's the greatest science administrator, combining both scientific leadership and science, that I have ever seen," scientist Robert Gallo has said. These days, Fauci's institute is boosting the supply of smallpox vaccine and testing Ebola and anthrax vaccines. "I don't see retirement on the horizon," he says.
* He proves that heaven can wait
Caleb Finch, 63
Professor of Neurobiology and Gerontology, University of Southern California
In the 1960s, Nobel laureate Peyton Rous confronted Finch, then a grad student investigating the process of growing old. "Why are you wasting your time on that?" Rous asked. "Everyone knows that aging is mainly about cancer and vascular disease!" But Finch was not swayed: "I had already convinced myself to the contrary." Finch revolutionized gerontology by showing that the aging process can be delayed. Among other advances, he has shown that low-calorie diets can slow brain aging in lab rodents.
You must remember this: In 2001, Finch revealed that the early stages of Alzheimer's may not involve cell death—opening the possibility that its ravages might be reversed.
* He starves cancer cells
Judah Folkman, 70
Director of Surgical Research, Children's Hospital, Boston
When Folkman first published his theory in 1971 that cancerous tumors create their own blood vessels, skeptics howled. "It would be like announcing today that you figured out how to do a head transplant," he has said. But Folkman's research silenced his critics. Knowing how tumors supply themselves with blood, scientists now work on shutting down the supply. Two dozen drugs based on his discovery are now in clinical trials.
Soul man: "My father was a rabbi, and he expected that I would be one too," Folkman says. "When I announced that I wanted to be a doctor, he gave me his blessing, but he said, 'You should be a rabbi-like doctor.' 'What's that?' I asked, and he said: 'You should always be of service.' "
* He declared the end of history—and fears the end of human nature
Francis Fukuyama, 50
Dean of Faculty and Professor of International Political Economy, School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University
Fukuyama made a splash in 1989 with an essay defining history as an argument over the best system of government. He concluded that, with Communism crumbling, Western liberal democracy would be "the final form of human government." Fukuyama expanded his theory in the 1992 bestseller The End of History and the Last Man. In his latest book, Our Posthuman Future, Fukuyama argues that manipulating DNA could someday prove disastrous: "What will happen to political rights once we are able, in effect, to breed some people with saddles on their backs, and others with boots and spurs?"
* He brought black culture into the canon
Henry Louis Gates, Jr., 52
Chair, Department of Afro-American Studies, Harvard University
Gates has transformed African American studies from a politicized backwater into a serious academic discipline. With a mix of passion, scholarship, and showmanship, Gates—known as Skip—brought unknown works to light, recruited and trained scholars, and, with Kwame Anthony Appiah, compiled Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African-American Experience. "Wherever there is Afro-American studies," says a colleague, "there is Skip Gates."
Role model: "My mother was the first colored secretary of the Piedmont PTA," recalls Gates, who grew up in West Virginia. "I didn't think 'Oh, my mother's a writer.' But in retrospect I realized that was an example. She'd write so well. We'd get all dressed up and go watch Mama read the minutes of the meetings. It was like watching Toni Morrison read Beloved."
* He bent the rules (and walls) of architecture
Frank Gehry, 74
Architect, Gehry Partners LLP
Frank Gehry In a field that was mainly about straight lines and symmetry, Frank Gehry's irregular, rounded, organic shapes have set a new artistic standard. His masterpiece, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, is wrapped in undulating titanium panels that suggest the billowing sails of a ship. Architect Philip Johnson called it "the most important building of our time." In April, Gehry's $62 million Bard College Performing Arts Center in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, will be unveiled. Other future projects include a biodiversity museum at the entrance to the Panama Canal and the Museum of Tolerance in Jerusalem.
Gehry's epiphany: "The turning point in my creative life was when I realized that what I was doing and thinking was the only thing I could do and think. Anything else would have been contrived."
Marvel at some of Frank Gehry's architecture, including the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, California.
* He defeated a plague once. Now he faces it again
D.A. Henderson, 74
Principal Science Advisor, Federal Office of Public Health Emergency Preparedness
When the World Health Organization decided to eradicate smallpox in 1966, the U.S. Surgeon General tapped employee Henderson to lead the effort. "I declined," recalls the physician. "I wanted to discuss career options. He told me, 'This is your career option.' " Henderson rose to the challenge, devising a strategy to surround and contain outbreaks. Smallpox, which killed 2 million people in 1967, was wiped out by 1977. "D.A. is one of history's great leaders," a doctor who participated in the initiative has said. After an academic career, Henderson rejoined the government to coordinate our national response to public health emergencies—including his old enemy, smallpox. "We need to plan, not panic," Henderson says.
* She made comfort chic—and designer fashion affordable
Norma Kamali, 57
Founder, Norma Kamali, Inc.
The first high-fashion designer to market her clothing to working women, Norma Kamali is responsible for some of the last quarter-century's most memorable trends: parachute pants, high-cut swimsuits, sleeping-bag coats, urban sportswear made of sweatshirt fleece… and those enormous shoulder pads. "My clothes aren't worn by bland people," Kamali once joked. The winner of numerous awards, she was added to New York's Fashion Walk of Fame last year. Lately, Kamali has been mentoring aspiring designers through the New York City public schools and working to keep up with demand for her much imitated clothing line. "If you want to understand the year in fashion," writes ultra-hip Paper magazine, "go to Norma Kamali."
Not the same old, same old: Kamali says baby boomers are inventing a new way to mature. "The word for 'old' is really 'experienced,' " she explains. "Technology gives us the ability to live longer, healthier lives. It opens tremendous possibilities for our generation to grow further with innovation, using experience and a strong self-confidence that no generation before us has had. We can focus on a philosophical objective—the dream—and making the fantasy real."
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