10 More Deserving Winners Of Time's "Person Of The Year" Than The Pope

8. Professor Peter Higgs

Nowadays, we are more accustomed to the idea of the world being destroyed by be-masked super villains, cackling with glee as they rub their gloved hands in a secret underground bunker. But Professor Peter Higgs combined the potential of an apocalyptic end wrapped in the guise of an unassuming, kindly elderly academic. Much was made in the news of the work being undertaken by Higgs and his team at CERN; the search for the Higgs-Boson, dubbed the 'God Particle' in certain sections. With its discovery, theoretically, would come answers pertaining to the amounts of energy needed to start the 'Big Bang' that created our own universe and unlock the secrets of what elements are able to give matter its substance. The building blocks of...well, everything! Inevitably, wry asides about Higgs soon possessing the power to rip holes in the space-time continuum began in earnest. In typical fashion, Higgs and Co. set about their task with a relative quiet, surfacing finally to inform the world that they had indeed achieved what they had set out to do. Although rewarded a Nobel Prize for his trouble, Higgs was keen to stress that this is only the beginning, and plenty more is to be done. Maybe that life insurance policy will become worthless after all.