Albert Einstein, whose theories laid the groundwork for many modern technologies including nuclear weapons, has been named "person of the century" by Time magazine.

Time called him a "genius, political refugee, humanitarian, locksmith of the mysteries of the atom and the Universe".

"In a century that will be remembered foremost for its science and technology ... one person clearly stands out as both the greatest mind and paramount icon of our age.

"The kindly, absent-minded professor whose wild halo of hair, piercing eyes, engaging humanity and extraordinary brilliance made his face a symbol and his name a synonym for genius, Albert Einstein," the magazine said.

It described him as "the century's greatest thinker, as an immigrant who fled from oppression to freedom and as a political idealist, who best embodies what historians will regard as significant about the 20th Century."

"The world has changed far more in the past 100 years than in any other century in history. The reason is ... technologies that flowed directly from advances in basic science," theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking wrote in a Time essay.

"Clearly, no scientist better represents those advances than Albert Einstein."

Time's runners-up for person of the century were US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who it said represented the triumph of freedom and democracy over fascism and communism, and Mahatma Gandhi, who symbolised individuals struggling for their rights. The issue is out on Monday.

The previous issue named the founder of online bookstore Amazon, Jeff Bezos, "man of the year".

Slow starter

Earlier in the year, 100 of today's leading physicists voted Einstein the greatest physicist of all time.

He did not show promise as a youngster, but went on to publish theories on space, time and matter which overturned existing concepts of the Universe and had a huge influence on society.

In his special theory of relativity, Einstein described how the only constant in the universe is the speed of light. Everything else could be worked out from the equation E=MC squared (energy = mass x the speed of light squared).

To solve some of the problems with his theory, he later produced the general theory of relativity, which states that to account for gravity, time and space must be curved around massive objects like stars, planets or black holes.

In 1939, six years after he fled European fascism and settled at Princeton University, Einstein, a pacifist, urged President Roosevelt to develop an atomic bomb before Nazi Germany.

Roosevelt formed the "Manhattan Project" which secretly developed the first atomic weapon, although Einstein did not work on the bomb himself.