NEW YORK -- Describing him as a locksmith of mysteries, from the atom to the universe, Time magazine named Albert Einstein its Person of the Century on Sunday.
"When we look back in 100 years, we'll remember the fight for freedom and the fight for civil rights, but above all, we're going to realize how science and technology changed our world," said Time's managing editor, Walter Isaacson.Einstein, born in Germany in 1879, developed the theory of relativity, which rejects the concept of absolute motion and explains why motion, speed and mass appear different depending on the observer's frame of reference.
The theory laid the groundwork for spectacular technological developments and observations in many fields, including gravitation and the study of the cosmos, and nuclear fission, which is the basis for the atom bomb.
Einstein won the 1921 Nobel Prize in physics. In 1933, he immigrated to the United States to take a post at Princeton University. A year later, the property he left behind in Germany was confiscated by the Nazi government because he was Jewish.
"In a century that will be remembered foremost for its science and technology -- in particular for our ability to understand and then harness the forces of the atom and universe -- one person clearly stands out as both the greatest mind and paramount icon of our age: The kindly, absent-minded professor whose wild halo of hair, piercing eyes, engaging humanity and extraordinary brilliance made his face a symbol and his name a synonym for genius, Albert Einstein," the magazine said.
Einstein was partly responsible for President Franklin D. Roosevelt's decision to pursue making an atom bomb. He wrote a letter to the president in 1939 warning that Germany could be repeating American experiments with uranium and suggesting that those experiments could produce a powerful bomb.
He later said: "If I had only known, I would have been a locksmith."
His humanitarian bent showed "science is not always good and it's not always bad. It's only as good as we make it," Isaacson said in an interview.
Einstein died in 1955.
Time's runners-up for Person of the Century were President Roosevelt, who the magazine said represented the triumph of democracy and freedom over fascism and communism; and Mahatma Gandhi, whom it picked to symbolize the ability of individuals to resist authority to secure civil rights and personal liberties.