Most Admired People of the Year

America’s most famous private investor, the “Oracle of Omaha” has said he plans to give away 99% of his wealth, which is valued at $87.2 billion. Warren Buffett donated $3.6 billion in 2019, much of it to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The Material Girl has been disrupting the status quo since the 1980s, when she became one of the world’s biggest pop stars. Madonna was an early advocate for equality for LGBTQ people and is an outspoken advocate for women’s rights.

Amitabh Bachchan, 77, is one of the best known and most beloved Indian film actors. He’s used his wealth and fame to improve the lives of his Indian compatriots. On more than one occasion he has paid the debts of farmers, supplied money for medical centers, and provided funding for solar power for private homes. Bachchan has been involved in a polio eradication campaign in India and has supported tiger conservation.

Angela Merkel is the first female chancellor of Germany, elected to that office four times since 2005. She has faced difficult decisions involving the high debt of EU members such as Greece and the migrant crisis earlier this decade. Her handling of the immigrant issue, in which thousands of Syrian refugees were admitted into Germany for humanitarian reasons, angered German citizens, and her popularity in Germany declined.Still, Merkel is admired for her leadership. She was named Time magazine Person of the Year in 2011 and was also awarded the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom the same year. In 2018, Merkel announced that she would step down as chancellor in 2021 amid setbacks to her party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU).

Elon Musk is known as a visionary entrepreneur and engineer. He currently leads rocket and spacecraft company SpaceX and electric car and energy company Tesla. Earlier this year, Musk’s SpaceX launched a rocket that deployed 60 satellites to provide broadband across much of the world. He unveiled last month an all-electric Tesla cybertruck that will compete with Ford’s vaunted F series truck.

Musk raised eyebrows in 2018 with what some dismissed as a stunt by offering a submarine to assist the rescue of a boys soccer team stranded in a cave in Thailand. He also courted trouble with regulators because of his April Fool’s Day tweet that Tesla had gone bankrupt — the tweet sank the company’s shares.