Youngest "Time Person of the Year"

Climate activist Greta Thunberg (Sweden, b. 3 January 2003) became the youngest person to be named "Person of the Year" by Time magazine, aged 16 years 354 days on 23 December 2019 – the cover date of the special double issue of Time in which she features.

Thunberg rose to prominence in August 2018 when she started to lobby the Swedish government to step up its environmental commitments, such as pledging to reduce carbon emissions. This inspired other youngsters around the world to strike from school to participate in anti-climate change demonstrations, a movement which came to be known as "FridaysForFuture".

In 2019, Thunberg has met with numerous government officials and spoken at major conferences such as the UN Climate Action Summit held in New York City, USA, in September 2019 (notably, she made a point of travelling to this summit on a carbon-neutral yacht ). Thunberg has famously rejected accolades in the past, but she accepted this honour on behalf of "climate activists everywhere".

The runners-up for the award in 2019 were: US President Donald Trump (who received the award in 2016); Leader of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi; the Hong Kong protesters; and the whistleblower in the Trump-Ukraine scandal.

Only four other individual women have been named "Time Person of the Year" since the accolade began: Wallis Simpson (1936), Queen Elizabeth II (1952), Corazon Aquino (1986) and Angela Merkel (2015). Other female recipients have shared the title as part of a group or as a conceptual movement, such as in 1975 when Time celebrated "American Women" in relation to the rise of feminism.

Previously, the record for youngest "Time Person of the Year" was held by US aviator Charles Lindbergh, who became the first person to fly across the Atlantic Ocean solo on 20–21 May 1927 at the age of 25. Lindberg was also the first person to be named "Time Person of the Year" in 1927 (in the 2 January 1928 issue).

The oldest "Time Person of the Year" was Konrad Adenauer (Germany, b. 5 January 1876, d. 19 April 1967), the former Chancellor of West Germany. He was aged 77 years 239 days when named "Man of the Year" in 1953, appearing on the cover of the 31 August issue of Time.

The "Person of the Year" is a special annual issue of the US news magazine Time, in which the organisation celebrates a person, group of people or even object that "for better or for worse... has done the most to influence the events of the year". The accolade began in 1927. The award was originally split into "Man of the Year" and "Woman of the Year", before being amalgamated to "Person of the Year" in 1999. Thunberg was also nominated for the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize, but in the end this went to Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali.