Every year since 1927, TIME has named a Person of the Year, identifying the individual who has done the most to affect the news in the past twelve months. The designation is often mistaken for an honor, but the magazine has always pointed out that inclusion on the list is not a recognition of good works (like the Nobel Peace prize, for example), but rather a reflection of the sheer power of one’s actions, whether for good or for ill. Hence, both Adolf Hitler and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini were chosen Person of the Year at the time when their actions commanded the attention of the world. Below, the complete list of Persons of the Year.
1927 Charles Lindbergh
1928 Walter Chrysler
1929 Owen Young
1930 Mahatma Gandhi
1931 Pierre Laval
1932 Franklin Delano Roosevelt
1933 Hugh Johnson
1934 Franklin Delano Roosevelt
1935 Haile Selassie
1936 Wallis Simpson
1937 Chiang Kai-Shek and Soong Mei-ling
1938 Adolf Hitler
1939 Joseph Stalin
1940 Winston Churchill
1941 Franklin Delano Roosevelt
1942 Joseph Stalin
1943 George Marshall
1944 Dwight Eisenhower
1945 Harry Truman
1946 James F. Byrnes
1947 George Marshall
1948 Harry Truman
1949 Winston Churchill
(“Man of the Half-Century”)
1950 The American Fighting-Man (representing US troops fighting in the Korean War; first abstract chosen)
1951 Mohammed Mossadegh
1952 Queen Elizabeth II
1953 Konrad Adenauer
1954 John Foster Dulles
1955 Harlow Curtice
1956 Hungarian Freedom Fighter (representing the citizens’ uprising against Soviet domination)
1957 Nikita Khrushchev
1958 Charles De Gaulle
1959 Dwight Eisenhower
1960 US Scientists
(represented by Linus Pauling, Isidor Rabi, Edward Teller, Joshua Lederberg, Donald A. Glaser, Willard Libby, Robert Woodward, Charles Draper, William Shockley, Emilio Segre, John Enders, Charles Townes, George Beadle, James Van Allen, and Edward Purcell)
1961 John F. Kennedy
1962 Pope John XXIII
1963 Martin Luther King, Jr.
1964 Lyndon Johnson
1965 William Westmoreland
1966 The Generation Twenty-Five and Under (representing American youth)
1967 Lyndon Johnson
1968 Apollo 8 astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and William Anders
1969 The Middle Americans (representing the American electorate’s turn to the right)
1970 Willy Brandt
1971 Richard Nixon
1972 Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger
1973 John Sirica
1974 King Faisal
1975 American Women
(represented by Betty Ford, Carla Hills, Ella Grasso, Barbara Jordan, Susie Sharp, Jill Conway, Billie Jean King, Susan Brown-miller, Addie Wyatt, Kathleen Byerly, Carol Sutton, and Alison Cheek)
1976 Jimmy Carter
1977 Anwar el-Sadat
1978 Deng Xiaoping
1979 Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini
1980 Ronald Reagan
1981 Lech Walensa
1982 The Computer
(first non-human abstract chosen; termed “Machine of the Year”)
1983 Ronald Reagan and Yuri Andropov
1984 Peter Ueberroth
1985 Deng Xiaoping
1986 Corazon Aquino
1987 Mikhail Gorbachev
1988 Endangered Earth (“Planet of the Year”)
1989 Mikhail Gorbachev (“Man of the Decade”)
1990 George H.W. Bush (termed “The Two George Bushes”; commended for his role in international affairs and criticized for his management of domestic affairs)
1991 Ted Turner
1992 Bill Clinton
1993 The Peacemakers
(represented by Nelson Mandela and F.W. de Klerk of South Africa and Yasir Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin of the Middle East)
1994 Pope John Paul II
1995 Newt Gingrich
1996 David Ho
1997 Andy Grove
1998 Bill Clinton and Kenneth Starr
1999 Jeffrey P. Bezos
2000 George W. Bush
2001 Rudolph Giuliani
2002 The Whistleblowers (represented by Cynthia Cooper of Worldcom, Sherron Watkins of Enron, and Coleen Rowley of the FBI)
2003 The American Soldier (representing US troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan)
2004 George W. Bush
2005 The Good Samaritans (represented by Bono [Paul Hewson], Bill Gates, and Melinda Gates)
2006 You
(representing the new age of user-generated Internet content)
2007 Vladimir Putin
