Time Person of the Year

Person of the Year (called Man of the Year until 1999^[1]) is an annual issue of the United States news magazine Time that features and profiles a person, a group, an idea, or an object that "for better or for worse...has done the most to influence the events of the year".^[2]

Background

The tradition of selecting a "Man of the Year" began in 1927, with Time editors contemplating the news makers of the year. The idea was also an attempt to remedy the editorial embarrassment earlier that year of not having aviator Charles Lindbergh on its cover following his historic trans-Atlantic flight. By the end of the year, it was decided that a cover story featuring Lindbergh as the Man of the Year would serve both purposes.^[3]

Selection

Despite the name, the title is not just granted to individuals. Pairs of people such as married couples and political opponents, classes of people, the computer ("Machine of the Year" in 1982), and "Endangered Earth" ("Planet of the Year" in 1988) have all been selected for the special year-end issue.

U.S. presidents

Since the list began, every serving President of the United States has been a Person of the Year at least once with the exceptions of Calvin Coolidge, in office at time of the first issue; Herbert Hoover, the next U.S. president; and Gerald Ford. Most were named Person of the Year either the year they were elected or while they were in office; the only one to be given the title before being elected is Dwight D. Eisenhower, in 1944 as Supreme Commander of the Allied Invasion Force, eight years before his election. He subsequently received the title again in 1959, while in office. Franklin D. Roosevelt is the only person to have received the title three times, first as president-elect (1932) and later as the incumbent president (1934 and 1941).

Women

In 1999, the title was changed to Person of the Year.^[4] Women who have been selected for recognition after the renaming include "The Whistleblowers" (Cynthia Cooper, Coleen Rowley and Sherron Watkins in 2002), Melinda Gates (jointly with Bill Gates and Bono, in 2005), and Angela Merkel in 2015. Prior to 1999, four women were granted the title as individuals: three as "Woman of the Year"—Wallis Simpson (1936), Queen Elizabeth II (1952) and Corazon Aquino (1986)–and one as half of the "Man and Wife of the Year", Soong Mei-ling (1937).^[5] "American Women" were recognized as a group in 1975. Other classes of people recognized comprise both men and women, such as "Hungarian Freedom Fighters" (1956), "U.S. Scientists" (1960), "The Inheritors" (1966), "The Middle Americans" (1969), "The American Soldier" (2003), "You" (2006), "The Protester" (2011) represented on the cover by a woman, and "Ebola fighters" (2014).

Special awards

In 1949, Winston Churchill was named "Man of the Half-Century", and the last issue of 1989 named Mikhail Gorbachev as "Man of the Decade". 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.^[6]

Controversial choices

Despite the magazine's frequent statements to the contrary, the designation is often regarded as an honor, and spoken of as an award or prize, simply based on many previous selections of admirable people.^[7] However, Time magazine points out that controversial figures such as Adolf Hitler (1938), Joseph Stalin (1939 and 1942), Nikita Khrushchev (1957) and Ayatollah Khomeini (1979) have also been granted the title for their impacts.^[8]

As a result of the public backlash it received from the United States for naming Khomeini as Man of the Year in 1979, Time has since shied away from using figures who are controversial in the United States for commercial reasons, fearing reductions in sales or advertising revenue.^[9]

Time's Person of the Year 2001, immediately following the September 11, 2001 attacks, was New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani. The stated rules of selection, the individual or group of individuals who have had the biggest effect on the year's news, made Osama bin Laden a more likely choice that year. The issue that declared Giuliani the Person of the Year included an article that mentioned Time's earlier decision to select the Ayatollah Khomeini and the 1999 rejection of Hitler as "Person of the Century". The article seemed to imply that Osama bin Laden was a stronger candidate than Giuliani, as Adolf Hitler was a stronger candidate than Albert Einstein. The selections were ultimately based on what the magazine describes as who they believed had a stronger influence on history and who represented either the year or the century the most. According to Time, Rudolph Giuliani was selected for symbolizing the American response to the September 11th attacks, and Albert Einstein selected for representing a century of scientific exploration and wonder.

Film-maker Michael Moore claims that director Mel Gibson cost him the opportunity to be Person of the Year alongside Gibson in 2004. Moore's controversial political documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 became the highest-grossing documentary of all time the same year Gibson's The Passion of the Christ became a box-office success and also caused significant controversy. Moore said in an interview "I got a call right after the '04 election from an editor from Time Magazine. He said,' Time Magazine has picked you and Mel Gibson to be Time's Person of the Year to put on the cover, Right and Left, Mel and Mike. The only thing you have to do is pose for a picture with each other. And do an interview together.' I said 'OK.' They call Mel up, he agrees. They set the date and time in LA. I'm to fly there. He's flying from Australia. Something happens when he gets home... Next thing, Mel calls up and says, 'I'm not doing it. I've thought it over and it is not the right thing to do.' So they put Bush on the cover."^[10]

Another controversial choice was the 2006 selection of "You", representing most if not all people for advancing the information age by using the Internet (via e.g. blogs, MySpace YouTube, and Wikipedia).^[11]

Online poll

Time magazine also holds an online poll for the readers to vote for who they believe to be the Person of the Year. While many mistakenly believe the winner of the poll to be the Person of the Year, the title, as mentioned above, is decided by the editors of Time. In the first online poll held in 1998, wrestler and activist Mick Foley won with over 50% of the votes.^[12]^[13] Foley was removed from the poll, and the title was given to Bill Clinton and Ken Starr, which led to outrage from the fans of Foley who mistakenly believed the winner of the poll would be the winner of the title. In 2006, the poll winner by a wide margin was Hugo Chávez, with 35% of the votes. The president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, came in second. Time again ignored those results, not mentioning them in the announcement of the Person of the Year.^[14] Time continues to annually run an online poll for the "People's Choice", but stresses the decision on who the magazine recognizes is made independently of this poll by the magazine's editors.^[15]

Persons of the Year

Year	Choice	Lifetime	Notes
1927	Charles Lindbergh	1902–1974	In 1927, Lindbergh became the first person to fly a plane solo non-stop across the Atlantic, from New York to Paris.
1928	Walter Chrysler	1875–1940	In 1928, Chrysler oversaw a merger of his Chrysler Corporation with Dodge before beginning work on the Chrysler Building.
1929	Owen D. Young	1874–1962	Young chaired a committee which authored 1929's Young Plan, a program for settlement of German reparations after World War I.
1930	Mahatma Gandhi	1869–1948	Gandhi was the leader of the India's independence movement. In 1930, he led the Salt Satyagraha, a 240-mile march to protest the imposition of taxes on salt by the British Raj.
1931	Pierre Laval	1883–1945	Laval was first elected Prime Minister of France in 1931. Laval was popular in the American press at the time for opposing the Hoover Moratorium, a temporary freeze on World War I debt payments that was disliked in both France and the US.^[16]
1932	Franklin D. Roosevelt	1882–1945	Roosevelt won the 1932 US Presidential election by a landslide, defeating the incumbent, Herbert Hoover.
1933	Hugh S. Johnson	1882–1942	In 1933, Johnson was appointed director of the National Recovery Administration, tasked by US President Franklin D. Roosevelt to bring industry, labor and government together to create codes of "fair practices" and set prices.
1934	Franklin D. Roosevelt (2)	1882–1945	Roosevelt was President of the United States from 1933 to 1945.
1935	Haile Selassie I	1892–1975	Selassie was Emperor of Ethiopia in 1935, when Italian forces invaded Ethiopia, starting the Second Italo-Abyssinian War.
1936	Wallis Simpson	1896–1986	In 1936, Simpson's relationship with King Edward VIII led the king to abdicate his thrones in order to marry her.
1937	Chiang Kai-shek	1887–1975	Chiang was Premier of the Republic of China at the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937.
1937	Soong Mei-ling	1898–2003	Soong was wife of Chiang Kai-shek from 1927 until his death in 1975. Addressed as Madame Chiang Kai-Shek by the magazine, she was recognized together with her husband as "Man & Wife of the Year".^[5]
1938	Adolf Hitler	1889–1945	As German Chancellor, Hitler oversaw the unification of Germany with Austria and the Sudetenland in 1938, after the Anschluss and Munich Agreement respectively.
1939	Joseph Stalin	1878–1953	In 1939, Stalin was General Secretary of the Communist Party and de facto leader of the Soviet Union. He oversaw the signing of a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany before invading eastern Poland.
1940	Winston Churchill	1874–1965	Churchill was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom during the 1940 Dunkirk evacuation and the Battle of Britain.
1941	Franklin D. Roosevelt (3)	1882–1945	Roosevelt was President of the United States in 1941 during the attack on Pearl Harbor, declaration of war against Japan and resulting entry of the United States into World War II. The editors had already chosen Dumbo as their "Mammal of the Year" before the Pearl Harbor attack, but quickly changed it to Roosevelt afterward (and before it was published).^[17]
1942	Joseph Stalin (2)	1878–1953	By 1942, Stalin was Premier of the Soviet Union, overseeing the Battle of Stalingrad (1942–1943).
1943	George Marshall	1880–1959	As United States Army Chief of Staff in 1943, General Marshall was instrumental in organizing US actions in World War II.
1944	Dwight D. Eisenhower	1890–1969	General Eisenhower was Supreme Allied Commander in Europe during 1944's Operation Overlord.
1945	Harry S. Truman	1884–1972	Truman became President of the United States after the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1945, authorizing the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
1946	James F. Byrnes	1879–1972	In 1946, Byrnes was United States Secretary of State during the Iran crisis of 1946, taking an increasingly hardline position in opposition to Stalin. His speech, "Restatement of Policy on Germany", set the tone of future US policy, repudiating the Morgenthau Plan economic policies and giving Germans hope for the future.
1947	George Marshall (2)	1880–1959	Appointed United States Secretary of State in 1947, Marshall was the architect of the Marshall Plan.
1948	Harry S. Truman (2)	1884–1972	Truman was elected in his own right as President of the United States in 1948, considered to be the greatest election upset in American history.^[18]^[19]^[20]
1949	Winston Churchill (2)	1874–1965	Proclaimed as the "Man of the half-century", Churchill had led Britain and the Allies to victory in WWII. In 1949, Churchill was Leader of the Opposition.
1950	The American fighting-man		Representing U.S. troops involved in the Korean War (1950–1953).
1951	Mohammad Mossadegh	1882–1967	In 1951, Mossadegh was elected as Prime Minister of Iran and expelled western oil companies, starting the Abadan Crisis
1952	Elizabeth II	Born in 1926	In 1952, Elizabeth acceded to the throne of the United Kingdom^[a] upon the death of her father, King George VI
1953	Konrad Adenauer	1876–1967	In 1953, Adenauer was re-elected as Chancellor of West Germany.
1954	John Foster Dulles	1888–1959	As United States Secretary of State in 1954, Dulles was architect of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization.
1955	Harlow Curtice	1893–1962	Curtice was President of General Motors (GM) from 1953 to 1958. In 1955, GM sold five million vehicles and became the first corporation to earn US$1 billion in a single year.^[21]
1956	The Hungarian freedom fighter		Representing Hungarian revolutionaries involved in the failed 1956 uprising.
1957	Nikita Khrushchev	1894–1971	In 1957, Khrushchev consolidated his leadership of the Soviet Union, surviving a plot to dismiss him by members of the Presidium, and leading the Soviet Union into the Space Race with the launch of Sputnik 1.
1958	Charles de Gaulle	1890–1970	De Gaulle was appointed Prime Minister of France in May 1958 and, following the collapse of the Fourth Republic and establishment of the Fifth Republic, was then elected President of France in December.
1959	Dwight D. Eisenhower (2)	1890–1969	Eisenhower was President of the United States from 1953 to 1961.
1960	U.S. Scientists		Represented by George Beadle, Charles Draper, John Enders, Donald A. Glaser, Joshua Lederberg, Willard Libby, Linus Pauling, Edward Purcell, Isidor Rabi, Emilio Segrè, William Shockley, Edward Teller, Charles Townes, James Van Allen and Robert Woodward.
1961	John F. Kennedy	1917–1963	Kennedy was inaugurated as President of the United States in 1961, ordering the failed invasion of Cuba by U.S.-trained Cuban exiles.
1962	Pope John XXIII	1881–1963	John XXIII was head of the Roman Catholic Church from 1958 to 1963. In 1962, he volunteered as a mediator in the Cuban Missile Crisis, gaining praise from both sides.
1963	Martin Luther King, Jr.	1929–1968	An African-American civil rights leader, King delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech in 1963.
1964	Lyndon B. Johnson	1908–1973	Johnson was elected in his own right as President of the United States in 1964, before securing the passage of the Civil Rights Act, declaring a War on Poverty and escalating U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.
1965	William Westmoreland	1914–2005	General Westmoreland was commander of U.S. forces in South Vietnam during the Vietnam War.
1966	The Inheritor		Representing a generation of American men and women, aged 25 and under.
1967	Lyndon B. Johnson (2)	1908–1973	Johnson was President of the United States from 1963 to 1969.
1968	The Apollo 8 astronauts		In 1968, the crew of Apollo 8 (William Anders, Frank Borman and Jim Lovell) became the first humans to travel beyond low Earth orbit, orbiting the Moon and paving the way for the first manned Moon landings in 1969.
1969	The Middle Americans		Also referred to as the silent majority.^[22]
1970	Willy Brandt	1913–1992	As Chancellor of West Germany, Brandt was acknowledged for "seeking to bring about a fresh relationship between East and West" through his "bold approach to the Soviet Union and the East Bloc".^[23]
1971	Richard Nixon	1913–1994	Nixon was President of the United States from 1969 to 1974.
1972	Richard Nixon (2)	1913–1994	As President of the United States, Nixon visited China in 1972, the first U.S. President to do so. Nixon later secured the SALT I pact with the Soviet Union before being re-elected in one of the largest landslide election victories in American history
1972	Henry Kissinger	Born in 1923	Kissinger, as Nixon's National Security Advisor, travelled with the President to China in 1972.
1973	John Sirica	1904–1992	In 1973, as Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, Sirica ordered President Nixon to turn over Watergate-related recordings of White House conversations.
1974	King Faisal	1906–1975	Faisal, King of Saudi Arabia, was acknowledged in the wake of the oil crisis of 1973–1974, caused by Saudi Arabia withdrawing its oil from world markets in protest at Western support for Israel during the 1973 Arab-Israeli War.
1975	American women		Represented by Susan Brownmiller, Kathleen Byerly, Alison Cheek, Jill Conway, Betty Ford, Ella Grasso, Carla Hills, Barbara Jordan, Billie Jean King, Carol Sutton, Susie Sharp, and Addie Wyatt.
1976	Jimmy Carter	Born in 1924	In 1976, Carter was elected President of the United States, defeating incumbent President Gerald Ford.
1977	Anwar Sadat	1918–1981	Sadat, as President of Egypt, traveled to Israel in 1977—the first Arab leader to do so—to discuss normalization of Egypt-Israel relations.
1978	Deng Xiaoping	1904–1997	Deng overthrew Hua Guofeng to assume de facto control over China in 1978, as Paramount Leader.
1979	Ayatollah Khomeini	1902–1989	Khomeini led the 1979 Iranian Revolution, establishing himself as Supreme Leader.
1980	Ronald Reagan	1911–2004	Reagan was elected President of the United States in 1980, defeating incumbent President Carter by a landslide.
1981	Lech Wałęsa	Born in 1943	Leader of the Polish Solidarity trade union and architect of the Gdańsk Agreement until his arrest and the imposition of martial law in December 1981.
1982	The Computer		Denoted "Machine of the Year" to herald the dawn of the Information Age.
1983	Ronald Reagan (2)	1911–2004	In 1983, as President of the United States, Reagan ordered the invasion of Grenada and championed the Strategic Defense Initiative.
1983	Yuri Andropov	1914–1984	Andropov, as Soviet leader, was a strong critic of the Strategic Defense Initiative. Andropov was hospitalized in August 1983 and died in 1984.
1984	Peter Ueberroth	Born in 1937	Ueberroth orchestrated the organization of the 1984 Summer Olympics, which involved a Soviet-led boycott.
1985	Deng Xiaoping (2)	1904–1997	As Paramount Leader of China, Deng was acknowledged for "sweeping economic reforms that have challenged Marxist orthodoxies".^[24]
1986	Corazon C. Aquino	1933–2009	Aquino was a prominent figure in 1986's People Power Revolution, being elected President of the Philippines.
1987	Mikhail Gorbachev	Born in 1931	As leader of the Soviet Union, Gorbachev oversaw Perestroika political reforms in 1987.
1988	The Endangered Earth		Planet of the Year, involving an aspect of Mother Nature.
1989	Mikhail Gorbachev (2)	Born in 1931	Acknowledged as "Man of the Decade". Gorbachev, as Soviet leader, oversaw 1989's first free Soviet elections before the fragmentation of the Eastern Bloc.
1990	George H. W. Bush	Born in 1924	As President of the United States, Bush oversaw U.S. involvement in the Gulf War (1990–1991).
1991	Ted Turner	Born in 1938	Founder of CNN.
1992	Bill Clinton	Born in 1946	Clinton was elected President of the United States in 1992.
1993	The Peacemakers		Represented by Yasser Arafat, F. W. de Klerk, Nelson Mandela and Yitzhak Rabin. De Klerk, as State President of South Africa, oversaw Mandela's release from prison in 1990. The pair worked together to end the Apartheid system. Arafat, as President of the Palestinian National Authority, and Rabin, as Prime Minister of Israel, signed the 1993 Oslo Accord, the first face-to-face agreement between Palestinian and Israeli authorities.
1994	Pope John Paul II	1920–2005	Head of the Roman Catholic Church from 1978 to 2005.
1995	Newt Gingrich	Born in 1943	Leader of the "Republican Revolution", a Republican party election landslide, which led to Gingrich being elected Speaker of the House.
1996	David Ho	Born in 1952	Ho, a scientist, pioneered much AIDS research.
1997	Andrew Grove	1936–2016	In 1997, Grove was Chairman and CEO of Intel, recognized as a pioneer in the semiconductor industry.
1998	Bill Clinton (2)	Born in 1946	As President of the United States, Clinton was impeached in 1998 following the Lewinsky scandal. The Senate acquitted him of the charges.
1998	Ken Starr	Born in 1946	Starr, a lawyer investigating various figures within the Clinton administration, published his Starr Report in 1998, opening the door for the impeachment of Bill Clinton.
1999	Jeffrey P. Bezos	Born in 1964	Bezos is founder and CEO of Amazon.com.
2000	George W. Bush	Born in 1946	In 2000, Bush was elected President of the United States following an allegation of miscount in the Florida recount.
2001	Rudolph Giuliani	Born in 1944	Giuliani was Mayor of New York City at the time of the September 11 attacks in 2001.
2002	The Whistleblowers		Represented by Cynthia Cooper, Coleen Rowley and Sherron Watkins. In 2001, Watkins uncovered accounting irregularities in the financial reports of Enron, testifying before Congressional committees the following year. In 2002, Cooper exposed a $3.8 billion fraud at WorldCom. At the time, this was the largest incident of accounting fraud in U.S. history. In 2002, Rowley, an FBI agent, gave testimony about the FBI's mishandling of information related to the September 11 attacks of 2001.
2003	The American soldier (2)		Representing U.S. forces around the world, especially in the Iraq War (2003–2011).
2004	George W. Bush (2)	Born in 1946	In 2004, Bush was re-elected President of the United States, overseeing U.S. involvement in the Iraq War.
2005	The Good Samaritans		Represented by Bono, Bill Gates and Melinda Gates. Bono, philanthropist and member of the rock band U2, helped to organise the 2005 Live 8 concerts. Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft and richest person in the world, and his wife Melinda, founded the philanthropic Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
2006	You^[11]		Representing individual content creators on the World Wide Web.
2007	Vladimir Putin^[25]	Born in 1952	In 2007, Putin was serving as President of Russia.
2008	Barack Obama^[26]	Born in 1961	In 2008, Obama was elected President of the United States, becoming the first African-American U.S. President in January 2009.
2009	Ben Bernanke^[27]	Born in 1953	Chairman of the Federal Reserve during the Financial crisis of 2007–08.
2010	Mark Zuckerberg^[28]	Born in 1984	Founder of social-networking website Facebook.
2011	The Protester^[29]		Representing many global protest movements — for example, the Arab Spring, the Indignants Movement, the Occupy Movement and the Tea Party movement — as well as protests in Chile, Greece, India and Russia among others.
2012	Barack Obama (2)^[30]	Born in 1961	In 2012, Obama was re-elected President of the United States.
2013	Pope Francis^[31]	Born in 1936	Elected head of the Roman Catholic Church in 2013, following the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI.
2014	Ebola fighters^[32]		"Ebola fighters" refers to health care workers who helped stop the spread of Ebola virus disease during the Ebola virus epidemic in West Africa, including not only doctors and nurses, but also ambulance attendants, burial parties and others.^[33] Represented on the covers by Dr. Jerry Brown, the medical director at the Eternal Love Winning Africa Hospital in Monrovia, Liberia,^[34]^[35] Dr. Kent Brantly, a physician with Samaritan's Purse and the first American to be infected in the 2014 outbreak,^[35]^[36] Ella Watson-Stryker, a health promoter for Doctors Without Borders who is originally from the United States,^[35]^[37] Foday Gallah, an ambulance supervisor and Ebola survivor from Monrovia, Liberia,^[35]^[38] and Salome Karmah, a trainee nurse and counselor from Liberia whose parents died of Ebola,^[35]^[39] as well as others mentioned in the article itself, such as Dr. Pardis Sabeti from the Broad Institute.
2015	Angela Merkel	Born in 1954	Chancellor of Germany since 2005, recognized for leadership in the Greek debt crisis and European migrant crisis.^[40]
2016	Donald Trump	Born in 1946	In 2016, Trump was elected President of the United States, the first time someone without a political or military background had won.^[41]