Frederik Paulsen

Frederick Paulsen inherited small drugmaker Ferring Pharmaceuticals, founded by his father 60 years ago. When he began running the business in 1983, it generated $15 million in annual revenue. Today the biotech outfit, which makes infertility, obstetrics, urology, gastroenterology and endocrinology products, has estimated sales of more than $1.75 billion. In 1998 he began underwriting philanthropic projects around the world while simultaneously exploring its far corners. One eccentric $10 million effort involves using machines mounted on helicopters to sprinkle blood-thinning poison across farms and fields to kill off the rats on South Georgia, a remote island with a population of 30 in the southeast of the Falklands. He is also building fertility clinics in Russia, one every two years, to help reverse its drastic population decline. He gave the kingdom of Bhutan more than $3 million and a big collection of tapestries to bolster its new Royal Textile Academy. Paulsen makes three or four extreme adventure trips a year, some lasting as long as 40 days. He was the first person to cross the Bering Strait from Alaska to Russia in an ultralight aircraft, which is little more than a lawn chair attached to a kite and propeller.