Contributors

Being on the cover of TIME or having yourself rendered in paraffin at Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum of London could be considered a benchmark for fame and infamy. Appearing in both spots could be a benchmark for making the TIME 100. Since last April, TIME, in conjunction with CBS News, has been saluting this century's most influential men and women with the TIME 100, a series of special issues profiling 20 leaders in five categories.

Next week Madame Tussaud's, a company that has been shaping history, so to speak, since 1835, joins us in our endeavor. Madame Tussaud's, the most popular tourist attraction in London, has created a special TIME 100 exhibit featuring the likenesses of figures such as Winston Churchill, Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, Pope John Paul II, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the Beatles, Pablo Picasso, Mikhail Gorbachev, Lech Walesa and Oprah Winfrey, all of whom have been named in our TIME 100 issues: Leaders and Revolutionaries (April 13, 1998), Artists and Entertainers (June 8, 1998) and Builders and Titans (Dec. 7, 1998). The museum will incorporate wax figures from upcoming issues on Scientists and Thinkers (March) and Heroes and Inspirations (June) as they are published. The series culminates with a year-end issue dedicated to the Person of the Century; a space in Madame Tussaud's will be set aside as a permanent site for a statue of the honoree. Additionally, Madame Tussaud's is offering visitors Internet stations where those interested can learn more about the people who have made the TIME 100; or, you can use our website at time.com

EDWARD BARNES is the only TIME staff member who keeps a bulletproof vest hanging in his office. For most of his career Barnes has specialized in getting incredible stories out of impossible places. While covering the 1991 Persian Gulf War for LIFE magazine, he was so close to the front lines that four Iraqi Republican Guards surrendered to him. Last week when fighting heated up in Sierra Leone, Barnes didn't hesitate. He jetted from New York City to Paris on Tuesday, then traveled through the Ivory Coast and Mali to Guinea, where he caught a Nigerian helicopter into Freetown on Saturday morning. Battle-hardened though he is, Barnes found the scene harrowing. "The situation is totally chaotic," he says. "Much of the city is under the control of 15- and 16-year-old kids who will shoot at anything." Barnes filed his story from Freetown on a borrowed satellite phone from under the cover of a palm tree as a muggy quiet settled over the city. His dispatches, and his courage, provided the outside world with its first glimpse of Sierra Leone's nightmare in more than a week, since the last journalists fled.

ROMESH RATNESAR joined TIME in 1997 and wrote his first story for the magazine on new ways to teach students math. Since then, he has profiled U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, written our initial story on Monica Lewinsky and landed on a missile cruiser off the coast of Bahrain to detail the American military buildup against Iraq. This week Ratnesar returns to the classroom for our cover story on homework. "Reporting on education is always intriguing," he says, "because while we seem able to reach a loose consensus on other social issues, people can't agree on the most basic questions about education, such as how much homework kids should receive." Of his own education history, Ratnesar says, "I didn't take homework very seriously. I never won the award for the best science project." He did not lack for ways to occupy his time, however. Ratnesar played three musical instruments, soccer and tennis, and edited his high school paper. He believes that while students today are assigned more homework than he endured, "it's still not very focused, at least not in the way you'd find in schools in Tokyo or Stockholm."