The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.
Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.
We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.
To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).
Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …
See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.
List of the most influential people in Religious Studies,
#1
Billy Graham
#55
Overall Influence
1918 - 2018 (100 years)
William Franklin Graham Jr. was an American evangelist, an ordained Southern Baptist minister, and a civil rights advocate whose broadcast and live sermons became well known internationally in the mid-to-late 20th century. During a career spanning six decades, Graham was a prominent evangelical Christian figure in the United States.
Go to Profile#2
Bart D. Ehrman
#806
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
#3
Alister McGrath
#697
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Alister Edgar McGrath is a Northern Irish theologian, Anglican priest, intellectual historian, scientist, Christian apologist, and public intellectual. He currently holds the Andreas Idreos Professorship in Science and Religion in the Faculty of Theology and Religion, and is a fellow of Harris Manchester College at the University of Oxford, and is Professor of Divinity at Gresham College. He was previously Professor of Theology, Ministry, and Education at King's College London and Head of the Centre for Theology, Religion and Culture, Professor of Historical Theology at the University of Oxf...
Go to Profile#4
Pope Francis
#330
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (88 years)
Pope Francis is the head of the Catholic Church, the bishop of Rome and sovereign of the Vatican City State. Francis is the first pope to be a member of the Society of Jesus , the first from the Americas, the first from the Southern Hemisphere, and the first pope born or raised outside Europe since the 8th century papacy of Syrian pope Gregory III.
Go to Profile#5
Hans Küng
#737
Overall Influence
1928 - 2021 (93 years)
Hans Küng was a Swiss Catholic priest, theologian, and author. From 1995 he was president of the Foundation for a Global Ethic . Küng was ordained a priest in 1954, joined the faculty of the University of Tübingen in 1960, and served as a theological adviser during the Second Vatican Council. In 1978, after he rejected the doctrine of papal infallibility, he was not allowed to continue teaching as a Catholic theologian, but he remained at Tübingen as a professor of ecumenical theology until he retired with the title professor emeritus in 1996. He remained a Catholic priest until his death. He supported the spiritual substance of religion, while questioning traditional dogmatic Christianity.
Go to Profile#6
Rowan Williams
#229
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Rowan Douglas Williams, Baron Williams of Oystermouth, is a Welsh Anglican bishop, theologian and poet. He was the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury, a position he held from December 2002 to December 2012. Previously the Bishop of Monmouth and Archbishop of Wales, Dr Williams was the first Archbishop of Canterbury in modern times not to be appointed from within the Church of England.
Go to Profile#7
Pope John Paul II
#333
Overall Influence
1920 - 2005 (85 years)
Pope John Paul II was head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 1978 until his death in 2005. He was later canonised as Pope Saint John Paul II. In his youth, Wojtyła dabbled in stage acting. He graduated with excellent grades from an all-boys high school in Wadowice, Poland, in 1938, soon after which World War II broke out. During the war, to avoid being kidnapped and sent off to a German slave labor camp, he signed up for work in harsh conditions in a quarry. Wojtyła eventually took up acting and developed a love for the profession and participated at a local theater.
Go to Profile#8
John Hick
#953
Overall Influence
1922 - 2012 (90 years)
John Harwood Hick was a philosopher of religion and theologian born in England who taught in the United States for the larger part of his career. In philosophical theology, he made contributions in the areas of theodicy, eschatology, and Christology, and in the philosophy of religion he contributed to the areas of epistemology of religion and religious pluralism.
Go to Profile#9
William Lane Craig
#266
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
William Lane Craig is an American analytic philosopher, Christian apologist, author, and Wesleyan theologian who upholds the view of Molinism and neo-Apollinarianism. He is currently a Professor of Philosophy at Houston Christian University and a Research Professor of Philosophy at Biola University's Talbot School of Theology. Craig has updated and defended the Kalam cosmological argument for the existence of God. He has also published work where he argues in favor of the historical plausibility of the resurrection of Jesus. His study of divine aseity and Platonism culminated with his book Go...
Go to Profile#10
Rupert Gethin
#2702
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Rupert Mark Lovell Gethin is Professor of Buddhist Studies in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies and codirector of the Centre for Buddhist Studies at the University of Bristol, and president of the Pali Text Society. He holds a BA in Comparative Religion , a master's degree in Buddhist Studies , and a PhD in Buddhist Studies , all from the University of Manchester. He was appointed Lecturer in Indian Religions by the University of Bristol in 1987, and then Professor In Buddhist Studies in 2009.
Go to Profile#11
Jürgen Moltmann
#1682
Overall Influence
1926 - Present (98 years)
Jürgen Moltmann is a German Reformed theologian who is Professor Emeritus of Systematic Theology at the University of Tübingen and is known for his books such as the Theology of Hope, The Crucified God, God in Creation and other contributions to systematic theology. Jürgen Moltmann is the husband of Elisabeth Moltmann-Wendel, a notable feminist theologian. Jürgen Moltmann described his own theology as an extension of Karl Barth's theological works, especially the Church Dogmatics, and he has described his own work as Post-Barthian. He has received honorary doctorates from a number of institut...
Go to Profile#12
Gustavo Gutiérrez
#1316
Overall Influence
1928 - Present (96 years)
Gustavo Gutiérrez Merino is a Peruvian philosopher, Catholic theologian, and Dominican priest, regarded as one of the founders of Latin American liberation theology. He currently holds the John Cardinal O'Hara Professorship of Theology at the University of Notre Dame, and has previously been a visiting professor at many major universities in North America and Europe.
Go to Profile#13
R. C. Sproul
#1895
Overall Influence
1939 - 2017 (78 years)
Robert Charles Sproul was an American Reformed theologian and ordained pastor in the Presbyterian Church in America. He was the founder and chairman of Ligonier Ministries and could be heard daily on the Renewing Your Mind radio broadcast in the United States and internationally. Under Sproul's direction, Ligonier Ministries produced the Ligonier Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, which would eventually grow into the 1978 Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy. Along with Norman Geisler, Sproul was one of the chief architects of the statement. Sproul has been described as "the greatest and mo...
Go to Profile#14
Damien Keown
#1993
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Damien Keown is a British academic, bioethicist, and authority on Buddhist bioethics. He is Professor Emeritus in the Department of History at Goldsmiths, University of London. Keown earned a B.A. in religious studies from the University of Lancaster in 1977 and a Ph.D. from the Faculty of Oriental Studies at the University of Oxford in 1986.
Go to Profile#15
Pope Benedict XVI
#857
Overall Influence
1927 - 2022 (95 years)
Pope BenedictXVI was the head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 19 April 2005 until his resignation on 28 February 2013. Benedict's election as pope occurred in the 2005 papal conclave that followed the death of Pope John Paul II. Benedict chose to be known as "Pope emeritus" upon his resignation, and he retained this title until his death in December 2022.
Go to Profile#16
Marcel Lefebvre
#1049
Overall Influence
1905 - 1991 (86 years)
Marcel François Marie Joseph Lefebvre was a French Catholic archbishop who influenced modern traditional Catholicism. In 1970, five years after the close of the Second Vatican Council, he founded the Society of Saint Pius X , a community to train seminarians in the traditional manner, in the village of Écône, Switzerland. In 1988, Pope John Paul II declared that Archbishop Lefebvre had "incurred the grave penalty of excommunication envisaged by ecclesiastical law" for consecrating four bishops against the pope's express prohibition but, according to Lefebvre, in reliance on an "agreement giv...
Go to Profile#17
E. P. Sanders
#2487
Overall Influence
1937 - 2022 (85 years)
Ed Parish Sanders was an American New Testament scholar and a principal proponent of the "New Perspective on Paul". He was a major scholar in the scholarship on the historical Jesus and contributed to the view that Jesus was part of a renewal movement within Judaism. Sanders identified himself as a "liberal, modern, secularized Protestant" in his book Jesus and Judaism; fellow scholar John P. Meier called him a postliberal Protestant. He was Arts and Sciences Professor of Religion at Duke University, North Carolina from 1990 until his retirement in 2005.
Go to Profile#18
B. Alan Wallace
#1633
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Bruce Alan Wallace is an American author and expert on Tibetan Buddhism. His books discuss Eastern and Western scientific, philosophical, and contemplative modes of inquiry, often focusing on the relationships between science and Buddhism. He is founder of the Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies.
Go to Profile#19
Wayne Grudem
#2508
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Wayne A. Grudem is a New Testament scholar turned theologian, seminary professor, and author. He co-founded the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood and served as the general editor of the ESV Study Bible.
Go to Profile#20
John Dominic Crossan
#3071
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (90 years)
John Dominic Crossan is an Irish-American New Testament scholar, historian of early Christianity, former Catholic priest who was a prominent member of the Jesus Seminar, and emeritus professor at DePaul University. His research has focused on the historical Jesus, the theology of noncanonical Gospels, and the application of postmodern hermeneutical approaches to the Bible. His work is controversial, portraying the Second Coming as a late corruption of Jesus' message and saying that Jesus' divinity is metaphorical. In place of the eschatological message of the Gospels, Crossan emphasizes the historical context of Jesus and of his followers immediately after his death.
Go to Profile#21
N. T. Wright
#2002
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Nicholas Thomas Wright , known as N. T. Wright or Tom Wright, is an English New Testament scholar, Pauline theologian and Anglican bishop. He was the bishop of Durham from 2003 to 2010. He then became research professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at St Mary's College in the University of St Andrews in Scotland until 2019, when he became a senior research fellow at Wycliffe Hall at the University of Oxford.
Go to Profile#22
James H. Cone
#3058
Overall Influence
1938 - 2018 (80 years)
James Hal Cone was an American theologian. He is best known for his advocacy of black theology and black liberation theology. His 1969 book Black Theology and Black Power provided a new way to comprehensively define the distinctiveness of theology in the black church. His message was that Black Power, defined as black people asserting the humanity that white supremacy denied, was the gospel in America. Jesus came to liberate the oppressed, advocating the same thing as Black Power. He argued that white American churches preached a gospel based on white supremacy, antithetical to the gospel of ...
Go to Profile#23
Raymond E. Brown
#2631
Overall Influence
1928 - 1998 (70 years)
Raymond Edward Brown was an American Sulpician priest and prominent biblical scholar. He was a specialist on the hypothetical Johannine community, which he speculated contributed to the authorship of the Gospel of John, and he also wrote studies on the birth and death of Jesus.
Go to Profile#24
Johann Baptist Metz
#3399
Overall Influence
1928 - 2019 (91 years)
Johann Baptist Metz was a German Catholic priest and theologian. He was Ordinary Professor of Fundamental Theology at the University of Münster, and a consultant to the synod of German dioceses. He is regarded as one of the most important German theologians after the Second Vatican Council, who influenced liberation theology and focused on compassion.
Go to Profile#25
Greg Bahnsen
#2894
Overall Influence
1948 - 1995 (47 years)
Greg L. Bahnsen was an American Reformed philosopher, apologist, and debater. He was a minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and a full-time Scholar in Residence for the Southern California Center for Christian Studies . He is also considered a contributor to the field of Christian apologetics, as he popularized the presuppositional method of Cornelius Van Til. He is the father of David L. Bahnsen, an American portfolio manager, author, and television commentator.
Go to Profile#26
Norman Geisler
#2311
Overall Influence
1932 - 2019 (87 years)
Norman Leo Geisler was an American Christian systematic theologian, philosopher, and apologist. He was the co-founder of two non-denominational evangelical seminaries . He held a Ph.D. in philosophy from Loyola University and made scholarly contributions to the subjects of classical Christian apologetics, systematic theology, the history of philosophy, philosophy of religion, Calvinism, Roman Catholicism, Biblical inerrancy, Bible difficulties, ethics, and more. He was the author, coauthor, or editor of over 90 books and hundreds of articles.
Go to Profile#27
Wolfhart Pannenberg
#2090
Overall Influence
1928 - 2014 (86 years)
Wolfhart Pannenberg was a German Lutheran theologian. He made a number of significant contributions to modern theology, including his concept of history as a form of revelation centered on the resurrection of Christ, which has been widely debated in both Protestant and Catholic theology, as well as by non-Christian thinkers.
Go to Profile#28
Marcus Borg
#3698
Overall Influence
1942 - 2015 (73 years)
Marcus Joel Borg was an American New Testament scholar and theologian. He was among the most widely known and influential voices in Liberal Christianity. Borg was a fellow of the Jesus Seminar and a major figure in historical Jesus scholarship. He retired as Hundere Distinguished Professor of Religion and Culture at Oregon State University in 2007. He died eight years later at the age of 72, of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis at his home in Powell Butte, Oregon.
Go to Profile#29
Charles Caldwell Ryrie
#5359
Overall Influence
1925 - 2016 (91 years)
Charles Caldwell Ryrie was an American Bible scholar and Christian theologian. He served as professor of systematic theology and dean of doctoral studies at Dallas Theological Seminary and as president and professor at what is now Cairn University. After his retirement from Dallas Theological Seminary he also taught courses for Tyndale Theological Seminary. He is considered one of the most influential American theologians of the 20th century. He was the editor of The Ryrie Study Bible by Moody Publishers, containing more than 10,000 of Ryrie's explanatory notes. First published in 1978, it has sold more than 2 million copies.
Go to Profile#30
Huston Smith
#696
Overall Influence
1919 - 2016 (97 years)
Huston Cummings Smith was a scholar of religious studies in the United States, He authored at least thirteen books on world's religions and philosophy, and his book about comparative religion, The World's Religions sold over three million copies as of 2017.
Go to Profile#31
J. I. Packer
#4188
Overall Influence
1926 - 2020 (94 years)
James Innell Packer was an English-born Canadian evangelical theologian, cleric and writer in the low-church Anglican and Calvinist traditions. He was considered one of the most influential evangelicals in North America, known for his best-selling book Knowing God, written in 1973, as well as his work as an editor for the English Standard Version of the Bible. He was one of the high-profile signers on the 1978 Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, a member on the advisory board of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, and also was involved in the ecumenical book Evangelicals and Catholics Together in 1994.
Go to Profile#32
Rosemary Radford Ruether
#2172
Overall Influence
1936 - 2022 (86 years)
Rosemary Radford Ruether was an American feminist scholar and Roman Catholic theologian known for her significant contributions to the fields of feminist theology and ecofeminist theology. Her teaching and her writings helped establish these areas of theology as distinct fields of study; she is recognized as one of the first scholars to bring women's perspectives on Christian theology into mainstream academic discourse. She was active in the civil rights movement in the 1960s, and her own work was influenced by liberation and black theologies. She taught at Howard University for ten years, and later at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary.
Go to Profile#33
Leonardo Boff
#1953
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (86 years)
Leonardo Boff , born as Genézio Darci Boff , is a Brazilian theologian, philosopher writer, and former Catholic priest known for his active support for Latin American liberation theology. He is Professor Emeritus of Ethics, Philosophy of Religion, and Ecology at the Rio de Janeiro State University. In 2001, he received the Right Livelihood Award for "his inspiring insights and practical work to help people realise the links between human spirituality, social justice and environmental stewardship."
Go to Profile#34
Wendy Doniger
#829
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty is an American Indologist whose professional career has spanned five decades. A scholar of Sanskrit and Indian textual traditions, her major works include The Hindus: An Alternative History; Asceticism and Eroticism in the Mythology of Siva; Hindu Myths: A Sourcebook; The Origins of Evil in Hindu Mythology; Women, Androgynes, and Other Mythical Beasts; and The Rig Veda: An Anthology, 108 Hymns Translated from the Sanskrit. She is the Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor of History of Religions at the University of Chicago, and has taught there since 1978. S...
Go to Profile#35
Mother Teresa
#172
Overall Influence
1910 - 1997 (87 years)
Mary Teresa Bojaxhiu MC , better known as Mother Teresa, was an Albanian-Indian Catholic nun and the founder of the Missionaries of Charity. Born in Skopje, then part of the Ottoman Empire, at the age of 18 she moved to Ireland and later to India, where she lived most of her life. On 4 September 2016, she was canonised by the Catholic Church as Saint Teresa of Calcutta. The anniversary of her death, 5 September, is her feast day.
Go to Profile#36
Gavin Flood
#3064
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Gavin Dennis Flood is a British scholar of comparative religion specialising in Shaivism and phenomenology, but with research interests that span South Asian traditions. From October 2005 through December 2015, he served in the Faculty of Theology University of Oxford and as the Academic Director of the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies which is a Recognised Independent Centre of the University of Oxford. In 2008, Flood was granted the title of professor of Hindu studies and comparative religion from the University of Oxford. In 2014, he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy. In 2016, ...
Go to Profile#37
James Dunn
#4660
Overall Influence
1939 - 2020 (81 years)
James Douglas Grant Dunn , also known as Jimmy Dunn, was a British New Testament scholar, who was for many years the Lightfoot Professor of Divinity in the Department of Theology at the University of Durham. He is best known for his work on the New Perspective on Paul, which is also the title of a book he published in 2007.
Go to Profile#38
Jacob Neusner
#2864
Overall Influence
1932 - 2016 (84 years)
Jacob Neusner was an American academic scholar of Judaism. He was named as one of the most published authors in history, having written or edited more than 900 books. Neusner's application of form criticism—a methodology derived from scholars of the New Testament—to Rabbinic texts was influential, but subject to criticism. Neusner's grasp of Rabbinic Hebrew and Aramaic has been challenged within academia.
Go to Profile#39
Edward Schillebeeckx
#4521
Overall Influence
1914 - 2009 (95 years)
Edward Cornelis Florentius Alfonsus Schillebeeckx was a Belgian Catholic theologian born in Antwerp. He taught at the Catholic University in Nijmegen. He was a member of the Dominican Order. His books on theology have been translated into many languages, and his contributions to the Second Vatican Council made him known throughout the world.
Go to Profile#40
Richard Bauckham
#4966
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Richard John Bauckham is an English Anglican scholar in theology, historical theology and New Testament studies, specialising in New Testament Christology and the Gospel of John. He is a senior scholar at Ridley Hall, Cambridge.
Go to Profile#41
Kallistos Ware
#5529
Overall Influence
1934 - 2022 (88 years)
Kallistos Ware was an English bishop and theologian of the Eastern Orthodox Church. From 1982, he held the titular bishopric of Diokleia in Phrygia , later made a titular metropolitan bishopric in 2007, under the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. He was one of the best-known modern Eastern Orthodox hierarchs and theologians. From 1966 to 2001, he was Spalding Lecturer of Eastern Orthodox Studies at the University of Oxford.
Go to Profile#42
Kurt Aland
#4430
Overall Influence
1915 - 1994 (79 years)
Kurt Aland was a German theologian and biblical scholar who specialized in New Testament textual criticism. He founded the Institut für neutestamentliche Textforschung in Münster and served as its first director from 1959 to 1983. He was one of the principal editors of Nestle–Aland – Novum Testamentum Graece for the Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft and The Greek New Testament for the United Bible Societies.
Go to Profile#43
Gerhard Ludwig Müller
#3172
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Gerhard Ludwig Müller is a German cardinal of the Catholic Church. He served as the Cardinal-Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith from his appointment by Pope Benedict XVI in 2012 until 2017. Pope Francis elevated him to the rank of cardinal in 2014.
Go to Profile#44
Vasudeva
#1604
Overall Influence
According to Hindu scriptures, Vasudeva , also called Anakadundubhi , is the father of the Hindu deities Krishna , Balarama, and Subhadra. He was a king of the Vrishnis, and a Yadava prince. The son of the Yadava king Shurasena, he was also the second cousin of Nanda, the foster-father of Krishna. His sister Kunti was married to Pandu.
Go to Profile#45
Karen Armstrong
#1801
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Karen Armstrong is a British author and commentator of Irish Catholic descent known for her books on comparative religion. A former Roman Catholic religious sister, she went from a conservative to a more liberal and mystical Christian faith. She attended St Anne's College, Oxford, while in the convent and majored in English. She left the convent in 1969. Her work focuses on commonalities of the major religions, such as the importance of compassion and the Golden Rule.
Go to Profile#46
Walter Kasper
#3384
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (91 years)
Walter Kasper is a German Catholic cardinal and theologian. He is President Emeritus of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, having served as its president from 2001 to 2010. Early life Born in Heidenheim an der Brenz, Germany, Kasper was ordained a priest on 6 April 1957 by Bishop Carl Leiprecht of Rottenburg.
Go to Profile#47
Daniel B. Wallace
#6514
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Daniel Baird Wallace is an American professor of New Testament Studies at Dallas Theological Seminary. He is also the founder and executive director of the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts, the purpose of which is digitizing all known Greek manuscripts of the New Testament via digital photographs.
Go to Profile#48
Ravi Zacharias
#4129
Overall Influence
1946 - 2020 (74 years)
Frederick Antony Ravi Kumar Zacharias was an Indian-born Canadian-American Christian evangelical minister and apologist who founded Ravi Zacharias International Ministries . He was involved in Christian apologetics for a period spanning more than forty years, authoring more than thirty books. He also hosted the radio programs Let My People Think and Just Thinking. Zacharias belonged to the Christian and Missionary Alliance , the Keswickian Christian denomination in which he was ordained as a minister.
Go to Profile#49
Kathy Keller
#6822
Overall Influence
Kathy Louise Keller is an author, lecturer, church founder, and Christian theologian from New York City who has appeared on the New York Times best seller list. She was the wife of pastor Tim Keller of New York's Redeemer Presbyterian Church, which the former couple then co-founded.
Go to Profile#50
Craig A. Evans
#5616
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Craig Alan Evans is an American biblical scholar. He is a prolific writer with 70 books and over 600 journal articles and reviews to his name. Career He earned his B.A in history and philosophy from Claremont McKenna College, a Master of Divinity from Western Baptist Seminary in Portland, Oregon, and his Master of Arts and Ph.D. in Biblical Studies from Claremont Graduate University in southern California.
Go to Profile