Person of the Year 2007

Peter Ueberroth Former Olympics organizer and director of the Contrarian Group, an investment firm For the 2007 Person of the Year, I nominate Vladimir Putin because he decided to perpetuate himself as a leader, letting the world know he's going to be around for a long time, in and out of office. He won the 2014 Winter Olympics for Sochi, Russia; he went to Guatemala and spoke English to an international crowd. He is an influence on all points of the globe--whether for good or bad, time will tell.

Betty Ford Former First Lady and founder of the renowned drug-addiction treatment facility in California In light of her recent trip to the United Arab Emirates to raise breast-cancer awareness, Laura Bush is a natural candidate for me. In signing the Memorandum of Understanding with the Health Authority of Abu Dhabi and the Susan G. Komen foundation, she has opened doors for women's health and emphasized the need--and possibility--for all women to be informed about breast cancer.

Newt Gingrich Former Speaker of the House and a co-author of A Contract with the Earth, a book on environmentalism There are moments when courage and commitment change the human spirit. After decades of tolerating a brutal dictatorship, the Burmese monks are reminding us that the love of freedom is universal. Their willingness to die for the freedom of others should lead us to want to live for those same beliefs. They have given the world an inspiring vision of hope and determination.

Nora Volkow Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse and pioneer in the science of addiction I'd select the Duke University scientist whose pioneering work in epigenetics and genomic imprinting has uncovered a vast territory in which a gene represents less of an inexorable sentence and more of an access point for the environment to modify the genome. The trailblazing discoveries of Dr. Randy Jirtle have produced a far more complete and useful understanding of human development and diseases.