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PASSAGE 8
Einstein Named "Person of Century"
Albert Einstein, whose theories on space time and matter helped unravel the secrets of the atom and of the universe, was chosen as "Person of the Century" by Time magazine on Sunday.
A man whose very name is synonymous with scientific genius, Einstein has come to represent_(1)_the flowering of 20th century scientific thought that set the stage for the age of technology.
"The world has changed far more in the past 100 years than in any other century in history. The reason is not political or economic, but technological-technologies_(2)_," wrote theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking in a Time essay explaining Einstein's significance. "Clearly, no scientist better represents those advances than Albert Einstein."
Time chose as runner-up President Franklin Roosevelt to represent the triumph of freedom and democracy over fascism, and Mahatma Gandhi as an icon for a century when civil and human rights became crucial factors in global politics.
"What we saw Franklin Roosevelt embodying the great theme of freedom's fight against totalitarianism, Gandhi personifying the great theme of individuals struggling for their rights, and Einstein being both a great genius and a great symbol of a scientific revolution that brought with it amazing technological advances_(3)_," said Time Magazine Editor Walter Isaacson.
Einstein was born in Ulm, Germany in 1879. In his early years, Einstein did not show the promise of what he was to become. He was slow to learn to speak and did not do well in elementary school. He could not stomach organized learning and loathed taking exams.
In1905, however, he was to publish a theory which stands as one of the most intricate examples of human imagination in history. In his "Special Theory of Relativity," Einstein described how the only constant in the universe is the speed of light. Everything else-mass, weight, space, even time itself-is a variable. And he offe
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