Time magazine has named Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk as its 2021 person of the year. “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,” said the magazine’s editor-in-chief Edward Felsenthal. “In 2021, Musk emerged not just as the world’s richest person but also as perhaps the richest example of a massive shift in our society.”
The person of the year designation typically goes to an individual or group who’s shaped people’s lives over the past 12 months, for better or worse. When the magazine first started the tradition in 1927 it named Charles Lindbergh, the first man to complete a solo transatlantic flight, as its person of the year; this year it settled on an entrepreneur who sees commercial promise in space flight.
