Elon Musk named Time’s person of the year
Tesla and Space X CEO Elon Musk has been named Time magazine’s “Person of the Year” for 2021.
The magazine’s prized annual designation was announced on Monday by editor-in-chief Edward Felsenthal, who said Musk was named the Person of the Year for “creating solutions to an existential crisis, for embodying the possibilities and perils of the age of tech titans and for driving society’s most daring and disruptive transformations.”
Felsenthal added that “Person of the Year is a marker of influence, and few individuals have had more influence than Musk on life on Earth, and potentially life off Earth too.”
“Even Elon Musk’s spacefaring adventures are a direct line from the very first Person of the Year, Charles Lindbergh, whom the editors selected in 1927 to commemorate his historic first solo transatlantic airplane flight over the Atlantic,” he said.
Musk, whose current net worth is approximately $260.6 billion, made history earlier this year after SpaceX launched its first mission to space without any professional astronauts on board.
Time magazine also wrote about Musk’s 66 million followers on Twitter, describing his “persona” as a “blunt instrument that often seems to revel in division and aggressive mockery.”
Among Musk’s many headline-grabbing moments last year were retaking the title of the world’s richest person once again, as well as hosting “Saturday Night Live” and selling Tesla stock after polling his Twitter followers.
Time magazine also named the scientists behind the mRNA vaccines — Katalin Kariko, Barney S. Graham, Kizzmekia Corbett and Drew Weissman — as its “Heroes of the Year.”
The magazine said they “achieved a breakthrough of singular importance, introducing an innovative and highly effective vaccine platform, based on mRNA, that will impact our health and well-being far beyond this pandemic.”
Simone Biles was named “Athlete of the Year,” and Olivia Rodrigo was named “Entertainer of the Year.”
Last year, Time named then-President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris its “Person of the Year” for 2020.