Who Should Be the Person of the Century?

By HENRY A. KISSINGER

TIME's coverage of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century will culminate in December, when we name a single figure as the Person of the Century. To help the magazine's editors make the choice, we are asking a select group of people to tell us whom they would pick. Here is the latest intriguing nomination:

ALBERT EINSTEIN The ultimate test of the impact of an individual or a group of individuals is twofold: whether the world they left is qualitatively different from that which they inherited, and what contribution they made to that change. By this standard, the seminal event of the 20th century is the scientific revolution. Einstein's theories of relativity, followed by discoveries by other scientists in the field of quantum mechanics, toppled the existing view of the universe and opened the way to discoveries that eclipse all previous scientific achievements of recorded history.

Not every scientific breakthrough has proved unambiguously benign--unleashing the atom, for example--but all have expanded the human horizon into spheres prior generations could not even imagine. In the process, the growing ability to master the universe has opened a new window into the human soul. Science and metaphysics, the secular and the sacred, have begun to merge. As science comes face to face with infinity--as it is forced to do by Einstein's theories--it deals with a phenomenon it can barely describe and has yet proved unable to explain.

The Einsteinian revolution has produced a paradox: while vastly extending mankind's reach, it has also exposed the essentially finite nature of the human scale. Living as we do on a speck in a universe whose extent is beyond our capacity to fathom, the unprecedented growth of human power has correspondingly created an imperative for humility. It is no accident that during a life of incomparable scientific achievement, Einstein often said, "God does not play dice with the universe."

--Henry A. Kissinger, former U.S. Secretary of State