CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY

Four of the nation's top companies got new presidents last week. All worked their way up from the bottom. The new top men:

MONSANTO CHEMICAL: Charles Allen Thomas, 51, is a chemist turned manager. A Kentuckian, he went from M.I.T.

to General Motors' research department in 1923, helped develop ethyl gasoline.

He was running his own research laboratory when Monsanto bought it in 1936, took him along as research boss. During World War II he bossed the purification of plutonium, from 1945 to 1948 ran the Oak Ridge project, is now a Government adviser on top-secret scientific matters. For Monsanto, seventh biggest U.S.

chemical company, he is blueprinting the nation's first private atomic power plant (TIME, Feb. 19).

CORN PRODUCTS REFINING: Ernest W.

Reid, 58, won his master's and Ph.D.

degrees in chemical engineering at the University of Pittsburgh while working at Pittsburgh's Mellon Institute. At the institute, Reid did research for Union Carbide & Carbon Corp., after nine years' work on esters succeeded in producing Vinylite, the plastic now used for shower curtains, combs, etc. In 1943, Reid, a Kansan, joined Cora Products (maker of Karo syrup, Mazola oil, etc.) as a vice president, during the war served as chemicals boss for WPB.

AMERICAN CAN: William C. Stolk, 50, was born in Venezuela (where his father was an importer), went to work instead of to college. He started with American Can's New York factory as a 17-c--an-hour timekeeper in 1916, went into the Army, and after World War I toured South America as a cotton-goods salesman. He rejoined the biggest U.S. can maker in 1921 as a solder-clerk, then went into selling. He rose to sales boss in Philadelphia (where he sold the world's first pressurized tennis ball cans to the Pennsylvania Rubber Co.). He became executive vice president in 1949, lately has set American Can's researchers to developing a "tinless tin can" to meet the tin shortage.

PHILLIPS PETROLEUM : Paul Endacott, 49, a rangy Kansan, was an All-America basketball player (University of Kansas '23), was snagged by Phillips' famed Oilers team. He worked in the oilfields as an engineer, caught top management's eye by persuading Chrysler Corp. to be the first to convert a big plant's heating system to liquefied petroleum gases (e.g., butane), rose to head of sales research in 1934 (Phillips' 1950 gross: $534 million) and vice president in 1943.

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