Andrew+Week+8

Calling someone the person of the century is an awfully big claim. Time Magazine did just that in 2000 labeling Albert Einstein as the leading man of the 20th century. With billions of people having lived during that period how can you pick just one as being the most influential. Especially when it can be argued that the extent of a person's influence depends on who you ask. Minorities might hold a civil rights leader on high, an evangelical may revere someone like Mother Theresa, intellectuals a scientist or politician, the list can go on almost forever. So it comes down to why did Time pick the man they did, Einstein. Probably very strongly due to publicity. By definition the more famous you are the more people that know you and in many cases revere you for some reason. Not always of course but usually. In the public eye Einstein an embodiment of science regardless of whether his achievements were actually as big as they are hyped up to be. Others did work similar to his, an example being general relativity. Ponicare, an engineer, worked out time dilation to a practical extent. Stopping at how to calculate it and not worrying about what caused it. Einstein also was not the first to use the idea of light quanta but made the first conclusions with it. So who's to say Niels Bohr or Martin Luther King Jr. or Ghandi wasn't more deserving? Pure publicity comes to be the balancing factor that probably tipped the scales in Einstein's favor. He was a wonderful picture of an intellectual celebrity for the period. His work in physics and relativity made him a huge figure in the scientific community and won the imaginations of the common folk. When he spoke out against Germany's actions and the political turmoil of the time he entered in the cultural side of society in a way that was elevating in countries such as the United States. So he gained fame not only for being intelligent but for being a political activist. The stories of his upbringing drop him to the level that the common person can respect. Supposed school troubles, blue collar jobs, relationship issues all make him seem in laymans terms, a normal man that was able to do great things. To continue on, even his iconic look in his later years added to his fame. He looked like a scientist as well as a kind old man. So to wrap it up, Einstein was a brilliant person, but it's hard to say for sure that he was “Person of the Century.” He was probably picked by Time mainly because he covered so many bases and was an iconic, celebrity figure to so many.