Time Person of the Year

Person of the Year is a special issue of the American magazine Time. It has been published each year since 1927. Until 1999, it was called "Man of the Year."^[1]

The "Person of the Year" is not always a person. It can be a person, group, idea, or thing that "for better or for worse...has done the most to influence the events of the year".^[2] This means that being chosen is not an award, like being chosen as the "best person of the year." The Person of the Year may be an enemy of the United States, like Adolf Hitler (1938) or Joseph Stalin (1939 and 1942).^[3] Every year, Time chooses the person who they think has had the most effect on the things that have happened in that year (whether those things were good or bad).^[4]

The first Person of the Year was aviator Charles Lindbergh, in 1927. Since then, Persons of the Year have included groups, whole generations, important objects, and even the Earth. Since the list began, every serving President of the United States has been a Person of the Year at least once, except for Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, and Gerald Ford. Franklin D. Roosevelt is the only person to have been named Person of the Year three times.

The December 31, 1999 issue of Time named Albert Einstein the "Person of the Century". Franklin D. Roosevelt and Mahatma Gandhi were chosen as runners-up.^[5]

1. ↑ Eliza Gray. "Person of the Year – TIME". TIME.com. Retrieved 2015-07-25.
2. ↑ Person of the Year: 75th Anniversary Celebration (Special Collector's ed.). New York: Time Books. 2002. OCLC 52817840.
3. ↑ "Person of the Year: A Photo History – Notorious Leaders: Controversial Choices". Time. 2006-12-16. Retrieved 2013-09-27.
4. ↑ Stacey Leasca (19 December 2012). "Time's 'Person of the Year' is Barack Obama". Global Post. Retrieved 2013-11-29.
5. ↑ Golden, Frederic (January 3, 2000). "Person of the Century: Albert Einstein". Time. Retrieved 2008-02-13.