Every year, the American magazine Time publishes its annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world. According to Nancy Gibbs, the magazine's editor-in-chief, "... the people on this list each embody a breakthrough: they broke the rules, broke the record, broke the silence, broke the boundaries to reveal what we're capable of."
© Clara Cullen
This year, two Belgians stand alongside Vladimir Putin, Donald trump, LeBron James, Pope Francis, Ed Sheeran, Emma Stone and Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The first is the Limburg couturier Raf Simons, currently creative director at Calvin Klein. The second is Michaël Gillon, an astronomer at the University of Liège and research associate at FRNS.
Time magazine's famous list comprises different categories of personality: "pioneers", "leaders", "artists", "titans" and "icons". And it is into this last category that the fashion designer Raf Simons falls. In 2012, he took over from John Galliano as head of haute couture for Dior. After leaving Dior, the Belgian became creative director for Calvin Klein in 2016. Michaël Gillon was included in the "pioneers" section after gaining recognition for the recent discovery of the exoplanetary system TRAPPIST. On 22 February, NASA announced the discovery of seven potentially inhabitable exoplanets the same size as Earth.
