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Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke, beat out several contenders, including Steve Jobs, Stanley McChrystal and Nancy Pelosi, for the Time’s Person of the Year 2009 designation. The selection puts the mild-mannered Ben Bernanke, a former professor, in the company of U.S. President Barack Obama, Pope John Paul II and Russian President Vladimir Putin, among other prominent world figures the magazine has picked in past years.

Person of the Year, originally called Man of the Year, is an annual issue of Time magazine that features and profiles a man, woman, couple, group, idea, place, or machine that, for better or for worse, has done the most to influence the events of the year since 1927.

Time credited the 56-year-old Bernanke with creative leadership that helped set the U.S. economy on a path to recovery even as he and other policy makers remain concerned about a high unemployment rate of 10 percent. “Bernanke knows the economy would be much, much worse if the Federal Reserve had not taken such extreme measures to stop the panic” – this is what the magazine said in its cover story. Time noted he had greatly expanded the Federal Reserve’s power through his efforts to fight the financial crisis.

The decision to name Ben Bernanke as Person of the Year followed weeks of debate and discussion among TIME editors and staff members. Here are the runners-up TIME considered for the distinction:

• General Stanley McChrystal – commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan
• The Chinese worker – an acknowledgement of an increasingly influential group of people in one of the world’s most powerful economies
• Nancy Pelosi – U.S. Speaker of the House
• Usain Bolt – Jamaican sprinter and Olympic gold medalist

In the end, it was Bernanke’s sway over a global financial crisis that touched millions of lives that led to TIME’s decision.

As the only group on the list this year, the Chinese Worker deserves the most credit in last year’s economic growth and has helped China become the world’s fastest-growing major economy and an economic stimulus for the rest of the world.

You can check out at Time for more details of Ben Bernanke.