Time Magazine Person of the Year
Known up to and including 1998 as Man of the Year. Note that the title goes to the person who "for better or for worse ... has done
the most to influence the events of the year".
Some Notable and Recent Individuals
1927 |
The first recipient |
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Charles Lindbergh |
1930 |
The first non–US recipient |
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Mahatma Gandhi |
1931 |
The first European recipient |
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Pierre Laval |
1932, 1934 and 1941 |
The only person to be awarded the title on three occasions |
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Franklin D. Roosevelt |
1936 |
The first female recipient |
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Wallis Simpson |
1938 |
The second European recipient |
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Adolf Hitler |
1939 and 1942 |
The second person to be awarded the title twice |
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Josef Stalin |
1940 and 1949 |
The first British recipient |
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Winston Churchill |
1952 |
The second individual woman, and the second British recipient |
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Queen Elizabeth II |
1986 |
The third individual woman |
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Corazon Aquino |
1999 |
Founder of Amazon |
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Jeff Bezos |
2010 |
Founder of Facebook |
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Mark Zuckerberg |
2015 |
The fourth individual woman |
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Angela Merkel |
2019 |
Youngest ever recipient (aged 17) |
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Greta Thunberg |
2021 |
... in the year in which he became the world's richest person |
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Elon Musk |
2022 |
... along with the Spirit of the country of which he was President |
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Volodymyr Zelenskyy |
Some Non–Individual Recipients
1950 |
(and 2003 ... with two slightly different wordings) |
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American soldiers |
1956 |
Freedom fighters in |
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Hungary |
1968 |
William Anders, Frank Borman and Jim Lovell |
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The crew of Apollo 8 |
1975 |
Represented by (among others) Betty Ford and Billie Jean King |
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American women |
1993 |
Represented by Yasser Arafat, F. W. de Klerk, Nelson Mandela, and Yitzhak Rabin |
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The Peacemakers |
2002 |
For exposing corruption in high places |
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The Whistleblowers |
2005 |
Represented by Bono (for organising Live 8), Bill Gates and Melinda Gates (for establishing their philanthropical
foundation) |
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The Good Samaritans |
2006 |
Representing individual content creators on the World Wide Web |
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"You" |
2011 |
Representing, for example, the initiators of the Arab Spring |
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The Protesters |
2014 |
For their response to a global crisis that began in Africa |
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The Ebola fighters |
2017 |
People who spoke out against sexual abuse and harassment |
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The Silence Breakers |
2020 |
Political partners |
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Joe Biden and Kamala Harirs |
See also 2018.
Inanimate Recipients
There have been only two of these (excluding the abstract concept that was named in
2022 along with its human figurehead):
1982 |
Machine of the Year |
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The Computer |
1988 |
Involving an aspect of Mother Nature |
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Planet Earth |
2018
In 2018 (not for the first time), a number of individuals were grouped together. They were journalists who had faced persecution, arrest
or murder as a consequence of their reporting. On this occasion however, the magazine was published with four different front covers, each
highlighting one of the individuals in question. (Others were featured in the
full citation.)
Collective title |
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The Guardians |
Washington Post columnist, murdered for his criticism of the Saudi crown prince |
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Jamal Khashoggi |
Editor of the Philippine news website Rappler, who was indicted for her critical coverage of the
president's controversially violent policies |
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Maria Resser |
Reuters journalists captured in Myanmar while investigating a massacre of Rohingya Muslims |
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Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo |
Daily newspaper published in Annapolis, Maryland, whose office was targeted in a mass shooting that resulted in
the death of five of its employees |
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The Capital |
Special Awards
Man of the Century (1949) |
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Winston Churchill |
Man of the Decade (1989) |
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Mikhail Gorbachev |
Person of the Century (1999) |
Winner |
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Albert Einstein |
Runners–up |
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Franklin D. Roosevelt |
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Mahatma Gandhi |
© Haydn Thompson 2018–22