Personalities: Nov. 1, 1963

COUPLING yesterday’s sense of thrift with today’s management-by-computer techniques, John Eldred Swearingen, 45, has sharply raised earnings in the five years that he has been president of Standard Oil (Indiana). Last week he took pride in a 35% earnings jump to $140 million for the first nine months of 1963, and in winning a big oil concession in Egypt. One of the youngest men ever to head a major U.S. oil company, South Carolina-born Swearingen joined Standard as a chemical engineer at 20, rose through research and production to become president at 39. He has drastically consolidated a sprawling organization, using automation to chop the work force by 25% while increasing output. In his office overlooking Lake Michigan, Swearingen himself writes the president’s column for the company magazine, expressing bluntly conservative views. He travels often, tending Standard’s interests from Iran to Australia. Home is a suburb north of Chicago, with a wife and three daughters.

HARDLY more than a long line drive away from Minneapolis’ Metropolitan Stadium is the home office of Control Data Corp., a computer manufacturer whose stock has soared 270% in the past year. The location is no coincidence, for President William C. Norris, 52, is an ardent baseball and football fan and an exhaustively meticulous planner. He keeps the company’s growth timetable projected for years ahead in a top-secret, five-inch-thick notebook. Such elaborate forethought has paid off. In six years since he left Sperry Rand’s Univac division to start on his own, Norris has made Control Data into a company with yearly sales of more than $63 million; last week he announced the purchase of the California-based control-systems division of Daystrom Inc. A quiet man, shy to the point of brusqueness, Norris is an engineer with a flair for recruiting, training and keeping good people who are given modest salaries but generous stock options. Norris delegates authority “as low as possible in the organization,” adheres to strict office routine that allows him time for “lots of family life” with his wife and eight children.