I Shouldn’t Have Laughed at Mustafa Kemal Gail Heriot

Back a few years ago, when Time Magazine was seeking nominations for its “Person of the Century,” my own candidate was Charles Babbage.  I’ll admit that it was a deliberately perverse choice.  I wanted a relatively unknown candidate who had never actually lived in the 20th century, but who nevertheless had a plausible claim to be the person who had most influenced it.  And I didn’t want a candidate whose influence on the 20th century was simply the result of some profound influence in some earlier century.  (That would be too easy.)  As inventor of the spectacularly unsuccessful “difference machine,” a precursor to the modern computer, Charles Babbage (1791-1871) fit my criteria.  He had precious little influence on the 19th century.  But he changed the course of the 20th (and now the 21st).

My perhaps equally idiosyncratic choice for “Person of the Millennium” was Jethro Tull.  Part of this was just sympathy for a hero who has had his name hijacked by a rock band.  But without Tull (1674-1741) and his fellow Agricultural Revolutionaries, the Industrial Revolution could never have occurred.  If all hands  necessary on the farm just to produce enough food to feed everyone, it doesn’t matter what could be produced in the factory, there would be enough laborers to work in the factores.  Tull is thus one of those giants whose shoulders we forget we’re standing on.  It seemed only fair to give him some sort of recognition.  Unsurprisingly, the folks at Time Magazine were evidently not adventurous enough for either of these nominees.  They chose Winston Churchill as “Person of the Century” instead–a fine choice, but a safe one.  As for “Person of the Millennium,” they inexplicably failed to choose one.

I remember reading a news story at the time that postcards were pouring into Time Magazine  in support of Mustafa Kemal (“Ataturk”).  At first the nomination seemed implausible to me, so I laughed.  Evidently, there were thousands of these postcards–nearly all of them with a postmark from Turkey. 

But since 9/11, I have come to regret my initial laughter.  Maybe Ataturk should indeed be regarded as the “Person of the Century”–though possibly the century will be the 21st and not the 20th.  Ataturk is obviously not a Charles Babbage figure whose