Timehost: Walter Isaacson, managing editor of TIME, has just joined us.
Welcome, Walter.
Walter Isaacson: Hi. Great to be here
Timehost: Let's take the first question from online....
Questioner asks: What were some of the things you considered during the voting?
Walter Isaacson: We look at what the great themes of the century were.
First, it was the century in which freedom triumphed over totalitarianism
In which democracy won over fascism.
For that we chose Franklin Roosevelt.
Another theme was the rise of civil liberties
for Blacks, women, colonial subjects, ordinary citizens;
for that theme we picked Gandhi, though it could have been ML Kin
But foremost it was a century of science and technology -
And Einstein was the clear winner
Questioner asks: What one accomplishment of Einstein's stands out as his greatest in
your mind?
Walter Isaacson: The General Theory of Relativity is the most awesome and elegant theory
ever produced.
Also, the whole notion of e=mc2, which ties together the forces of nature
leads not only to the bomb but indirectly to much of modern technology.
Timehost: Here's a question about the selection process...
Questioner asks: What do you consider as someone who "is not in the spirit of the
contest"?
Walter Isaacson: We tried to focus on people who had lived and done their work during the 20th century.
Questioner asks: How did you feel about the amount of votes Hitler received for Person of the Century?
Walter Isaacson: Hitler was someone who had to be considered
He had an enormous impact on this century.
He was responsible for the genocide that redefined evil,
and for the war that reordered the world's politics. Since the choice we made was "for good or evil," we had to consider him. Nancy Gibbs has a nice essay in the issue about our thinking on this. I addressed it in my opening essay.
In the end, we felt that he had lost. He was on history's losing side.
Totalitarianism ended up on the ash heap of history, to use Marx's phrase.
So we didn't pick him.
Questioner asks: How big of a role did you have in selecting the people?
Walter Isaacson: There were a dozen editors here who were part of the process. I also consulted former editors. We had panels of historians, scientists and experts at our meetings. In the end, a consensus formed. A few favored FDR. Most of us favored Einstein.
When the consensus began to form for Einstein, people got more and more comfortable. So in the end, it was by general consent.
Questioner asks: Were you ever afraid of, say, Newsweek getting wind of this big
decision and beating you to it? What sort of security measures
do you take when the entire world is watching?
Walter Isaacson: We wanted to keep it secret because we wanted people to keep guessing.
It was interesting to have people debating it.
Newsweek and other magazines were doing their own projects.
I was not worried about someone else trying to pick a person of the century,
since that was something that Time had staked out 70 years ago,
when we started doing Person of the Year.
Questioner asks: Specifically, how did Einstein's life contribute to the way we live our lives today?
Walter Isaacson: Einstein's theory that photons can have momentum led to lasers
which all of us now use not only for CDs but hundreds of things.
His theory of e=mc2 led to the bomb, which helped end World War II and defined
the cold war
His early work on wave-particle duality set the stage for quantum theory.
Even though he rejected some of quantum theory's implications,
his work was influential.
It led to the theory behind semiconductors, microchips and what we're doing now.
His fingerprints are on many things:
space travel, the expanding universe and black holes, the bomb, electronics,
even television, which depends on the theories of quantum particles
and photons with momentum.
Questioner asks: Who do you think the WOMAN of the Century should be?
Walter Isaacson: Margaret Sanger: with the push for birth control, she helped women gain control
of their bodies,
and that helped lead to the advances we have today.
Gloria Steinem did a great piece on her in the Time 100 series leading up to this choice.
Timehost: Here's a comment I'm sure you'll like to hear...
Questioner says: I think that Albert Einstein was an excellent choice. I agree that with your criteria of "good or evil" that Hitler had to be considered,
but I thank your editors for not choosing him.
Walter Isaacson: You're welcome!
And thanks!
Questioner asks: Did you explore Einstein's views of war and peace?
Walter Isaacson: Yes. He wrote the letter to FDR that led to the building of the bomb...
And then he became a pacifist and promoter of peace.
He was also a political refugee from totalitarianism
which made him a good symbol of the century
and he was the prime founder of the International Rescue Committee
which resettles refugees.
He helped bring over the great photographer Phillipe Halsman,
who took the amazing picture of him on Time's cover this week.
Questioner asks: We still operate like Newtonians-- like we live in a predictable,
mechanical reality; Einsteinian thinking has been around a long time and
still we're Newton's children-- what will it take, how long, for us to adapt to the wondrous reality he established?
Walter Isaacson: For us to travel near light speed and slow down time!
Just kidding.
His handiwork already affected the arts:
relativity led to relativism and the breakdown of time and space,
in the works of Picasso, Kandinsky, Stravinsky, etc.
And in physics, we're seeing the revolution in technology
that sprang from his works even as we sit here on our computers.
This revolution in electronics did more to promote the cause of freedom than any politicians.
Questioner asks: Mr. Issacson, it is said that he who saves one life saves the world. By this definition, how was Einstein chosen over say a Jonas Salk or one of that genre?
Walter Isaacson: Salk was a strong contender. So was Fleming, who discovered penicillin
which saved more lives than all the wars
in this century.
But Einstein in some ways embodies all of science's genius this century,
for he was the foremost genius of the century.
Timehost: Here's someone who wanted TIME to name a Person of the Millennium...
Questioner asks: How about the best person between 1000 AD and 2000 AD ?
Walter Isaacson: Gutenberg. But that's just my opinion.
I still love print as well as new media!
Questioner asks: When will Time Magazine give Credit and recognition to The Artist and Entertainer of The Century Elvis Presley?
Walter Isaacson: I love Elvis. He was the king.
Old Shep is my favorite song of his.
So that makes me a rather quirky fan.
Let me make, right here, an admission:
we made a mistake not making him one of our top contenders.
But he ain't the person of the century, any more than he was a hound dog.
Questioner asks: How did Einstein express his view(s) on God?
Walter Isaacson: He believed in a rather depersonalized God
But he had great faith in God's handiwork
One of his favorite phrases was
"God does not play dice with the universe."
That was his way of saying that he could not believe
in the randomness or uncertainty of some quantum theorists.
God may be subtle, Einstein said, but malicious he is not.
So Einstein felt that we would someday discover God's design
and remove the notion that there was randomness and uncertainty.
The search for God's design, he said,
was the source of all that is beautiful in science and art,
and it is what gives true meaning to our lives.
In my opening essay, I quote some of what he said about God.
Questioner asks: Who would you name as the villain of the century?
Walter Isaacson: Hitler, probably...
But Lenin comes close...
He snatched an obscure ideology, communism, from the 19th century,
and he imposed it with a brutality that begat not only Stalin and Mao...
but also Hitler, who admired Lenin's brutal techniques.
Good riddance to them all.
Timehost: Here's a question about the online poll...
Questioner asks: Why were people being taken off the online poll for no reason, when it was a poll from the people?
Walter Isaacson: I think the moderators of the poll tried to keep it focused on people who had lived & died in this century and they tried to cut back on robotic voting.
Questioner asks: What's one quote of Einstein is most powerful in your opinion? One that deals with the arts and sciences in general.
Walter Isaacson: "Searching for God's design is the source of all true art and science." "...in the face of that, we with our modest powers must feel humble." What Einstein did is give us knowledge, but also cause for humility. We are but a speck in an unfathomably large universe. This sense of humility, of searching for the greater design, is the lesson we in this century should bequeath to the next one. Thank you for having me. Good night.
Timehost: Thank you, Walter.
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