Will an MIT Alum be Named Person of the Year?

Time magazine won't announce its Person of the Year until Dec. 14, but four Institute-connected candidates are among the 40 nominated. According to Time, the Person of the Year is a person, group, idea, or object that—for better or for worse—has most influenced the events of the past year.

Time's editors will choose the recipient, but readers can vote online and view real-time results. Are the MIT alumni listed below deserving of Person of the Year? Let us now in the comments below or on Facebook.

The Mars Rover

"The greatest (car) of all is the Mars Curiosity rover, one ton of SUV-size machine now 160 million miles from Earth and trundling across the Martian surface."

The rover's journey and landing on Mars was orchestrated by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which includes 20 MIT alumni. JPL members Allen Chen '00, SM '02 and Bobak Ferdowsi SM '03 returned to campus in October for a panel discussion on the mission. The group also includes Fuk Li '75, PhD '79, Jennifer Maxwell '01, and Noah Warner '01, SM '03, PhD '07.

Mario Draghi PhD '77

"Henry Kissinger famously (and apocryphally) once asked, 'Who do I call if I want to speak to Europe?' Today, the answer is Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank, whose influence on the euro's survival makes him Europe's most powerful person."

The Higgs boson

"It was in the 1960s that Scottish physicist Peter Higgs first posited the existence of a particle that causes energy to make the jump to matter. But it was not until last summer that a team of researchers sealed the deal and in so doing finally fully confirmed Einstein's general theory of relativity."

Assistant Professor Steven Nahn PhD '98 was one of 50 MIT physicists and faculty members who participated in the Higgs boson experiment—the largest amount from any American university.

Benjamin Netanyahu '75, SM '76

"The (Israeli) elections weren't the only ones on Netanyahu's mind this year. The 63-year-old Israeli premier played an outsize role in the contest between U.S. President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney."

A 2012 MIT selection would join a list of at least five previous alumni Persons of the Year, including:

• Ben Bernanke PhD '79 (2009), Federal Reserve Chairman who oversaw the Reserve's response to the global financial crisis. [Read Bernanke's 2006 MIT Commencement address.]
• Dr. David Ho, 1978 graduate of the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology (1996), CEO and director of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center. [Read Ho's 1998 MIT Commencement address.]
• American Scientists (1960), which included Charles Stark Draper '26, SM '28, ScD '38, William Shockley PhD '36, Robert Woodward '36, PhD '37, and former professor and provost Charles Hard Townes.