RRI Personality of the Year 2021
The winners of RRI's 2021 poll.
Eugen Cojocariu, 30.12.2021, 14:24
Radio Romania International once
again held its traditional end-of-year poll in which listeners and Internet and
social media users get to choose the person or persons who had the greatest positive
impact on the world.
This year healthcare workers from around
the world working on the front line in the battle against the coronavirus
pandemic, together with all those who helped develop vaccines against Covid-19 were
chosen as Persons of the Year, with special mentions going to the German doctors
and founders of the BioNTech labs Uğur Şahin and Özlem Türeci, and the
Hungarian biochemist Katalin Karikó, who contributed to the development of the mRNA
technology on which some of the Covid vaccines are based.
Other proposals included the
journalists and presenters who have been providing accurate information since
the start of the pandemic, as well as Dr Annalisa Malara, who diagnosed the
first Covid-19 case in Italy, and Dr Marco Stabile, whose discovery that
heparin helps prevent blood clots has saved many lives.
The politicians put forward for Personality
of the Year included the former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, US President
Joe Biden, Russian President Vladimir Putin, the President of the European Commission
Ursula von der Leyen and the Romanian Ambassador to Italy George Bologan, who
is just finishing his term. The COP26 summit on climate change was also
nominated.
Yet more proposals for Personality
of the Year included the American entrepreneur Jeff Bezos, the young tennis
sensation Emma Raducanu, the Auvergne pour un enfant humanitarian
association, the Somalese YouTuber AboFlah, the Algerian national football team,
who won the 2021 Arab Cup, the Indian librarian Palam Kalyanasundaram, who for the last 30 years has donated
all his income to charity, and the doctors who saved the Danish football player
Christian Eriksen, who suffered a heart attack on the pitch last June.
