Year in Review: Meet the 10 game changers of 2019

Business Standard brings you a list of celebrated personalities from across the world, who made big news for reasons good and bad

1 / 10

A 16-year-old Swedish environmental activist, became the global face of the growing youth movement against climate inaction. In August 2018, Greta Thunberg started a school strike for the climate outside the Swedish Parliament. Since then, she has gone global, striking a chord with young people dissatisfied by the slow progress in climate change mitigation. Thunberg lives a low-carbon life — she is vegan, and doesn't prefer air travel because of the carbon footprint it leaves. She has taken a year off from school to pursue her campaigning. She has been named one of the world’s most influential teens by the TIME magazine.

2 / 10

The first person from the northeast to head the country's judiciary and credited for bringing the curtains down on the decades-old politically and religiously sensitive Ayodhya land dispute, which dates back to even before the Supreme Court came into existence in 1950. Justice Gogoi, who was sworn on October 3, 2018 as the 46th CJI, held the position for a little over 13 months and in the last few days of his tenure, the benches headed by him delivered some path-breaking judgements. The CJI also headed a bench which, by a majority 3:2 verdict, referred to a larger 7-judge bench the pleas seeking review of the apex court's historic 2018 judgement allowing women and girls of all ages to enter Kerala's Sabarimala temple.

3 / 10

Reality TV star and make-up mogul Kylie Jenner has become the world's youngest self-made billionaire, according to Forbes billionaires' list. The 21-year-old founded and owns Kylie Cosmetics, the three-year-old beauty business that generated an estimated $360 million in sales last year, reports bbc.com. She reached the milestone earlier than Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg who became a billionaire aged 23.

4 / 10

Toni-Ann Singh is a Jamaican-American actress, who was crowned Miss World 2019. She was previously crowned Miss Jamaica World 2019. And with her crowning, she has closed out this year’s historic pageant circuit, marking the first time the titles for all five top beauty contests were won by black women. Othere were: Miss Universe 2019 Zozibini Tunzi, Miss America Nia Franklin, Miss USA Cheslie Kryst and Miss Teen USA 2019 Kaliegh Garris.

5 / 10

Barcelona's soccer playerLionel Messi is considered the best player in the world and widely regarded as one of the greatest players of all time. This year on 2 December, Messi was awarded a record-breaking sixth Ballon d'Or. The 2019 Ballon d'Or was the 64th annual ceremony of the Ballon d'Or, presented by France Football, and recognising the best footballer in the world for 2019. Lionel Messi won the award for a record sixth time in his career.

6 / 10

Finland's Social Democrats elected a 34-year-old to the post of prime minister on December 8th, making her the youngest head of government in the country's history. At 34, Marin also becomes one of the world's youngest state leaders, ahead of Ukraine's prime minister Oleksiy Honcharuk, who is currently 35. She is two years younger than Finland's long-time Centre Party leader Esko Aho, who became Finland's Prime Minister in 1991 at the age of 36. Marin has been serving as the country's Minister of Transport and Communications since June. She also led the Social Democratic party during Rinne's extended sick leave last winter.

7 / 10

Indian-American economist Abhijit Banerjee has won the 2019 Nobel Prize in Economics, along with Esther Duflo of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Michael Kremer of Harvard University “for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty.” Abhijit Banerjee was born in Parbhani, 1961, to a family of academics. He attended the Presidency College, Kolkata in economics in 1981. Later, the 58-year-old economist later got his PhD in 1988 from Harvard University. His early education life included study at the University of Calcutta and Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University.

8 / 10

Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin announced that they are stepping down from the leadership role of the parent company Alphabet. Google CEO Indian-American Sundar Pichai (47), was appointed Alphabet CEO, making him one of the most powerful corporate leaders of the world. Pichai has been with Google for 15 years now. In 2004, he was interviewed at Google on the same day that the company launched Gmail. He is credited with making Google chrome the world's most-used web browser.

9 / 10

The Minister of Home Affairs, who has also been President of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) since 2014, is the chief strategist of the saffron outfit and a close aide of Narendra Modi. He was elected to the lower House of Parliament, the Lok Sabha, in the 2019 Indian general election from Gandhinagar. This year he has been the pilot and face of several big and controversial decisions taken in 2019, such as repeal of Article 370, passing of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and National Register of Citizens (NRC), which he has been committed to. Amid all the protest against CAA, he said that the CAA will not be rolled back, and “the government was firm like a rock on its implementation”

10 / 10

World's no. 5 shuttler, P V Sindhu created history by becoming the first Indian to win badminton World Championships gold in Switzerland's Basel. She earned the title of world champion by crushing Nozomi Okuhara 21-7, 21-7. This much-awaited gold has further added another laurel to Sindhu's illustrious CV at the World Championships. The Indian won 21-7 21-7 in the summit clash that lasted just 38 minutes.