An expert on national defense and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee in the 100th Congress (1987-1989), Sam Nunn (born 1938) was elected to the United States Senate from Georgia from 1972 until his retirement in 1996.

Sam Nunn's capacity for winning Democratic senatorial elections in Republican years classified him as a "Boy Wonder" of Georgia and the New South. In 1972, when Richard Nixon took nearly 70 percent of the vote in his state, Nunn won his first election to the United States Senate by a comfortable 54 percent against Republican Fletcher Thompson. Again in 1984, when Ronald Reagan captured Georgia by over 60 percent, Sam Nunn won his third election, against Mike Hicks, by a whopping 80 percent. And in the 1984 election he had the support of his Republican senatorial colleague from Georgia, Mack Mattingly.

Born in Perry, Georgia, on September 25, 1938, Sam Nunn was the son of Samuel A. and Elizabeth (Canon) Nunn. Educated...