State leaders Since the list began, every serving president of the United States has been a Man or Person of the Year at least once, with the exceptions of
Calvin Coolidge (in office at the time of the first issue),
Herbert Hoover (the subsequent president), and
Gerald Ford (the only president never to have been elected to the office of president or vice president). Most were named Man or 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 was
Dwight D. Eisenhower, in 1944, as
Supreme Commander of the Allied Invasion Force, eight years before his first election. He received the title again in 1959 while in office.
Franklin D. Roosevelt became the first chosen US president and 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). Below is a list of all countries' heads of state or government to have been chosen as Man, Woman, or Person of the Year (arranged in chronological order by country name, from the most frequently selected).
Notes Winston Churchill was chosen a second time for the special "Man of the Half-Century" edition in 1949 while serving as
Leader of the Opposition before his second premiership;
Charles de Gaulle was chosen while being elected
President of France before
formally taking office;
Lech Wałęsa and
Nelson Mandela were chosen before being elected
President of Poland and
President of South Africa, respectively.
Women Before 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 "Man and Wife of the Year",
Soong Mei-ling (jointly with
Chiang Kai-shek) in 1937. "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" (1950 and 2003), "
You" (2006), "The Protester" (2011), and "
Ebola Fighters" (2014). However, the title on the magazine remained "Man of the Year" for both the 1956 "Hungarian Freedom Fighter" and the 1966 "Twenty-five and Under" editions which both featured a woman standing behind a man, and "Men of the Year" on the 1960 "U.S. Scientists" edition which exclusively featured men on its cover. It was not until the 1969 edition on "The Middle Americans" that the title embraced "Man and Woman of the Year". In 1999, the title was changed to the
gender-neutral "Person of the Year" (its first recipient under the new name being
Jeff Bezos of
Amazon.com). 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;
Angela Merkel (2015);
"The Silence Breakers" (2017);
Greta Thunberg (2019);
Kamala Harris (jointly with
Joe Biden) in 2020;
Taylor Swift (2023); and "The Architects of
AI" (among whom
Fei-Fei Li and
Lisa Su) in 2025. To celebrate
International Women's Day in 2020,
Time editors released 89 new magazine covers, each showing women, in addition to the 11 already chosen, as counterparts to the Man of the Year choices from the past century. Since 2022,
Time has awarded a separate "Women of the Year" title to a number of women each year, in a similar fashion to
Time 100.
Groups and non-humans Despite the name, the title is not just granted to individuals. Pairs of people such as married couples and political opponents, classes of people, and inanimate objects have all been selected for the special year-end issue.
Multiple named people •
Chiang Kai-shek and
Soong Mei-ling, president and first lady of China (1937) •
William Anders,
Frank Borman, and
Jim Lovell, crew of
Apollo 8 (1968) •
Richard Nixon and
Henry Kissinger, political allies (1972) •
Ronald Reagan and
Yuri Andropov,
Cold War rivals (1983) •
Nelson Mandela and
F. W. de Klerk;
Yasser Arafat and
Yitzhak Rabin, political leaders leading peace negotiations (1993) •
Bill Clinton and
Ken Starr, key figures in the
Clinton impeachment (1998) •
Cynthia Cooper,
Coleen Rowley, and
Sherron Watkins,
whistleblowers (2002) •
Bill Gates,
Melinda Gates, and
Bono, philanthropists (2005) •
Joe Biden and
Kamala Harris, American president-elect and vice president-elect (2020)
Classes of unnamed people •
The American fighting-man /
The American soldier (1950 and 2003) •
The Hungarian freedom fighter (1956) • U.S. scientists (1960) •
The Inheritor (1966) • Middle Americans (1969) • American women (1975) •
You (2006) •
The Protester (2011) •
Ebola fighters (2014) •
The Silence Breakers (2017) •
The Guardians (2018) • The Architects of
AI (2025)
Inanimate objects • The Computer (Machine of the Year, 1982) • The Endangered Earth (Planet of the Year, 1988)
Abstract concepts •
The Spirit of Ukraine (2022)
Special editions 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". Both
Franklin D. Roosevelt and
Mahatma Gandhi were chosen as runners-up. Aside from Einstein, the December 31 edition also named Persons of the Century for every century of the
2nd millennium:
William the Conqueror for the 11th century,
Saladin for the 12th century,
Genghis Khan for the 13th century,
Giotto for the 14th century,
Johannes Gutenberg for the 15th century,
Elizabeth I for the 16th century,
Isaac Newton for the 17th century,
Thomas Jefferson for the 18th century, and
Thomas Edison for the 19th century.
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.
Time observes 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 impact on events. Nevertheless, as a result of the cancellation of subscriptions from the American audience for naming Khomeini Man of the Year in 1979, following the
Iran hostage crisis, the magazine's editors have since shied away from using figures who are controversial in the United States, fearing reductions in sales or advertising revenue.
Times Person of the Year for 2001, immediately following the
September 11 attacks, was
Rudy Giuliani, who was
mayor of New York City at the time of the attacks. The stated rules of selection—the individual or group of individuals who have had the bigger influence on the year's events—made
Osama bin Laden the more likely choice that year; however, Giuliani was selected for symbolizing the American response to the attacks, in the same way that Albert Einstein was selected Person of the Century for representing a century of scientific exploration and wonder instead of Adolf Hitler, who was arguably a stronger candidate.
Withdrawn and alleged selections In 1941, the fictional elephant Dumbo from
Walt Disney's
animated film of the same name was selected to be "Mammal of the Year", and a cover was created showing the
title character in a formal portrait style. However, the
attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7 pre-empted the cover. The U.S. president Franklin Delano Roosevelt was named Man of the Year for a record third time, although Dumbo's Mammal of the Year profile still appeared on the inside pages of the magazine. U.S. president
Donald Trump claimed on Twitter in November 2017 that
Time editors had told him he would "probably" be named Person of the Year for a second time, conditional on an interview and
photo shoot, which he had refused.
Time denied that they had made any such promises or conditions to Trump, who was named a runner-up. ==Person(s) of the Year==