It’s not often Adolf Hitler and Pope John XXIII share any kind of list, but TIME Magazine’s Person of the Year nod has never been exclusively about good deeds. Since 1927, the publication has named an individual, group, or concept that left the biggest imprint on news or world events, regardless of their motives.
“The choice is in no way an accolade, nor a Nobel Prize for doing good,” TIME publisher P.I. Prentice wrote in 1945. “Nor is it a moral judgment.”
The tradition began during the first week of 1928, when the magazine was short on news following the holidays. With no story worthy of the cover, editors decided to look for a story of the year instead. That was Charles Lindbergh, who flew the first solo transatlantic flight in 1927.
Some years there are more than one honoree, as in 1968’s Apollo 8 astronauts; sometimes it’s ambiguous, as in 2003’s naming of the military soldier; and sometimes it’s a break in tradition, as with 1936’s first Woman of the Year, Duchess of Windsor Wallis Simpson. (The title was changed to Person of the Year in 1999.)
For a crash course in 20th century history, take a look at each person acknowledged since 1927, courtesy of opendatasoft.
- Charles Lindbergh (1927)
- Walter Chrysler (1928)
- Owen D. Young (1929)
- Mahatma Gandhi (1930)
- Pierre Leval (1931)
- Franklin D. Roosevelt (1932)
- Hugh S. Johnson (1933)
- Franklin D. Roosevelt (1934)
- Haile Selassie (1935)
- Wallis Simpson (1936)
- Chiang Kai-shek, Soong Mei-ling (1937)
- Adolf Hitler (1938)
- Joseph Stalin (1939)
- Winston Churchill (1940)
- Franklin D. Roosevelt (1941)
- Joseph Stalin (1942)
- George Marshall (1943)
- Dwight D. Eisenhower (1944)
- Harry S. Truman (1945)
- James F. Byrnes (1946)
- George Marshall (1947)
- Harry S. Truman (1948)
- Winston Churchill (1949)
- The American Soldier (1950)
- Mohammad Mosaddegh (1951)
- Elizabeth II (1952)
- Konrad Adenauer (1953)
- John Foster Dulles (1954)
- Harlow Curtice (1955)
- The Hungarian Freedom Fighter (1956)
- Nikita Khrushchev (1957)
- Charles de Gaulle (1958)
- Dwight D. Eisenhower (1959)
- American Scientists (1960)
- John F. Kennedy (1961)
- Pope John XXIII (1962)
- Martin Luther King Jr. (1963)
- Lyndon B. Johnson (1964)
- William Westmoreland (1965)
- The Inheritor (1966)
- Lyndon B. Johnson (1967)
- The Apollo 8 Astronauts: Jim Lovell, William Anders, Frank Borman (1968)
- The Middle Americans (1969)
- Willy Brandt (1970)
- Richard Nixon (1971)
- Henry Kissinger (1972)
- Richard Nixon (1972)
- John Sirica (1973)
- King Faisal (1974)
- American Women (1975)
- Jimmy Carter (1976)
- Anwar Sadat (1977)
- Deng Xiaoping (1978)
- Ayatollah Khomeini (1979)
- Ronald Reagan (1980)
- Lech Wałęsa (1981)
- The Computer (1982)
- Ronald Reagan, Yuri Andropov (1983)
- Peter Ueberroth (1984)
- Deng Xiaoping (1985)
- Corazon Aquino (1986)
- Mikhail Gorbachev (1987)
- The Endangered Earth (1988)
- Mikhail Gorbachev (1989)
- George H.W. Bush (1990)
- Ted Turner (1991)
- Bill Clinton (1992)
- The Peacemakers: Yitzhak Rabin, F.W. de Klerk, Nelson Mandela, Yasser Arafat (1993)
- Pope John Paul II (1994)
- Newt Gingrich (1995)
- David Ho (1996)
- Andrew Grove (1997)
- Bill Clinton, Ken Starr (1998)
- Person of the Year: Jeff Bezos // Person of the Century: Albert Einstein (1999)
- George W. Bush (2000)
- Rudy Giuliani (2001)
- The Whistleblowers: Sherron Watkins, Cynthia Cooper, Coleen Rowley (2002)
- The American Soldier (2003)
- George W. Bush (2004)
- The Good Samaritans: Bill Gates, Melinda Gates, Bono (2005)
- You (2006)
- Vladimir Putin (2007)
- Barack Obama (2008)
- Ben Bernanke (2009)
- Mark Zuckerberg (2010)
- The Protester (2011)
- Barack Obama (2012)
- Pope Francis (2013)
- The Ebola Fighters (2014)
- Angela Merkel (2015)
- Donald Trump (2016)
- The Silence Breakers (2017)
- The Guardians and the War on Truth (2018)
- Greta Thunberg (2019)
- Joe Biden, Kamala Harris (2020)
- Elon Musk (2021)
- Volodymyr Zelenskyy (2022)
[h/t opendatasoft]
Jake Rossen
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