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).
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List of the most influential female people in Religious Studies,
#51
Rachel Elior
#13431
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Rachel Elior is an Israeli professor of Jewish philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Jerusalem, Israel. Her principal subjects of research has been Hasidism and the history of early Jewish mysticism.
Go to Profile#52
Athalya Brenner
#21171
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Athalya Brenner-Idan is a Dutch-Israeli biblical scholar known for her contribution to feminist biblical studies. Academic career Brenner studied at Haifa University and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem before doing a PhD at the University of Manchester under the supervision of James Barr. She taught for a time at Oranim Academic College.
Go to Profile#53
Chung Hyun Kyung
#35248
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Chung Hyun Kyung is a South Korean Christian theologian. She is a lay theologian of the Presbyterian Church of Korea, and is also an Associate Professor of Ecumenical Theology at Union Theological Seminary in the United States.
Go to Profile#54
Prathia Hall
#19068
Overall Influence
1940 - 2002 (62 years)
Prathia Laura Ann Hall Wynn was an American leader and activist in the Civil Rights Movement, a womanist theologian, and ethicist. She was the key inspiration for Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech.
Go to Profile#55
Morna Hooker
#38227
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (93 years)
Morna Dorothy Hooker is a British theologian and New Testament scholar. Early life and education Morna Hooker was born in Beddington on 19 May 1931. She went to Bristol University where she graduated with first class honours in theology, and then earned her MA. She worked for a PhD degree at the University of Manchester, then at the University of Durham.
Go to Profile#56
Margaret M. Mitchell
#40803
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Margaret M. Mitchell is an American biblical scholar and professor of early Christianity. She is currently Shailer Mathews Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago Divinity School. Mitchell received her doctorate at the same institution in 1989, under the supervision of Hans Dieter Betz and Robert McQueen Grant. She also served as dean of the Divinity School from 2010 to 2015.
Go to Profile#57
Kwok Pui-lan
#46972
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Kwok Pui-lan is a Hong Kong-born feminist theologian known for her work on Asian feminist theology and postcolonial theology. Academic life and career Kwok was born in Hong Kong to Chinese parents who practiced Chinese folk religion at home. She converted to Anglican Christianity when she was a teenager.
Go to Profile#58
Cynthia Ann Humes
#14630
Overall Influence
Cynthia Ann Humes is a professor of Religious Studies at Claremont McKenna College, in Claremont, California. The college lists her research interests as: History of Hinduism in America, Modern Hindu Goddess Worship, and Gender and Religion. She is also an author, the college's Chief Technology Officer and a Commissioner on the Claremont City Planning Commission.
Go to Profile#59
Marva Dawn
#39789
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Marva J. Dawn was an American Christian theologian, author, musician, preacher, and educator. She was associated with the parachurch organization Christians Equipped for Ministry in Vancouver, Washington where she taught Christians around the globe. She also served as a Teaching Fellow in Spiritual Theology at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia. Dawn was generally perceived as a Lutheran evangelical. She often wrote in a paleo-orthodox style, stressing the importance of Christian tradition and the wisdom of the Church through the centuries.
Go to Profile#60
Letty M. Russell
#46915
Overall Influence
1929 - 2007 (78 years)
Letty Mandeville Russell was a feminist theologian, professor, and prolific author. She was a member of the first class of women admitted to Harvard Divinity School, and one of the first women ordained in the United Presbyterian Church. After earning a doctorate in theology at Union Theological Seminary, she joined the faculty at Yale Divinity School, where she taught for 28 years.
Go to Profile#61
Carter Heyward
#39024
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Isabel Carter Heyward is an American feminist theologian and priest in the Episcopal Church, the province of the worldwide Anglican Communion in the United States. In 1974, she was one of the Philadelphia Eleven, eleven women whose ordinations eventually paved the way for the recognition of women as priests in the Episcopal Church in 1976.
Go to Profile#62
Diana Walsh Pasulka
#18100
Overall Influence
Diana Walsh Pasulka is an American writer and professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. Education Pasulka has a B.A. from University of California, Davis, an M.A. from Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, and a Ph.D. from Syracuse University.
Go to Profile#63
Ann Belford Ulanov
#40196
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (86 years)
Ann Belford Ulanov is an American academic and psychotherapist. She is the Christiane Brooks Johnson Memorial Professor of Psychiatry and Religion at Union Theological Seminary in New York City and a Jungian analyst in private practice.
Go to Profile#64
Barbara Thiering
#35854
Overall Influence
1930 - 2015 (85 years)
Barbara Elizabeth Thiering was an Australian historian, theologian, and biblical exegete specialising in the origins of the early Christian Church. In books and journal articles, she challenged Christian orthodoxy, espousing the view that new findings present alternative answers to its supernatural beliefs. Her analysis has been rejected by both New Testament scholars and scholars in Judaism.
Go to Profile#65
Valerie Saiving
#45089
Overall Influence
1921 - 1992 (71 years)
Valerie Saiving was a feminist theologian. She is the author of the influential essay The Human Situation: A Feminine View. Biographical details Valerie Saiving Goldstein was born in 1921, and received her BA from Bates College, Maine, United States in 1943, studying both theology and psychology. Her University of Chicago Divinity School PhD thesis, The Concepts of Individuality in Whitehead’s Metaphysics, was published in 1966. She was co-founder of the Department of Religious Studies and of the Women's Studies programme at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Geneva, New York State, where she taught from 1959 to 1987.
Go to Profile#66
Hindy Najman
#50971
Overall Influence
Hindy Najman is an American academic specialising in Jewish studies and the Hebrew Bible. Since July 2015, she has been Oriel and Laing Professor of the Interpretation of Holy Scripture at the University of Oxford. Previously, she was Director of the Centre for Jewish Studies at the University of Toronto from 2008 to 2012, and Professor of Religious Studies and Classics at Yale University from 2012 to 2015.
Go to Profile#67
Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz
#38847
Overall Influence
1943 - 2012 (69 years)
Ada María Isasi-Díaz was a Cuban-American theologian who served as professor emerita of ethics and theology at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey. As a Hispanic theologian, she was an innovator of Hispanic theology in general and specifically of mujerista theology. She was founder and co-director of the Hispanic Institute of Theology at Drew University until her retirement in 2009.
Go to Profile#68
Jo Ann Hackett
#57052
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Jo Ann Hackett is an American scholar of the Hebrew Bible and of Biblical Hebrew and other ancient Northwest Semitic languages such as Phoenician, Punic, and Aramaic. Early life and education Hackett was born in Louisville, Kentucky, and grew up in Jeffersonville, Indiana. She graduated from Jeffersonville High School in 1966. She received her B.A. in Mathematics from DePauw University, 1970; her M.A. in Religious Studies from Indiana University, 1975; and her Ph.D in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from Harvard University, 1980.
Go to Profile#69
Elaine Graham
#35439
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Elaine L. Graham is the Grosvenor Research Professor at the University of Chester. She was until October 2009 the Samuel Ferguson Professor of Social and Pastoral Theology at the University of Manchester. In March 2014, she was installed as Canon Theologian of Chester Cathedral.
Go to Profile#70
Angela Tilby
#30904
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Angela Clare Wyatt Tilby is British Anglican priest, author and former producer. She began her career working as a producer within the BBC's Religious Department. She was then ordained in the Church of England, and was a parish priest in the Diocese of Ely alongside working at Westcott House, a theological college in Cambridge, and as a lecturer with the Cambridge Theological Federation. She moved to Oxford where she was a Canon of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford . In retirement, she is canon emeritus of Christ Church Cathedral, and a chaplain and honorary canon at Portsmouth Cathedral.
Go to Profile#71
Ann Heberlein
#24039
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (54 years)
Ann Helen Heberlein is a Swedish academic and author, who writes extensively on theology and ethics. She is best known for her autobiographical account of life with bipolar disorder, Jag vill inte dö, jag vill bara inte leva .
Go to Profile#72
Ellen Ueberschär
#37225
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (57 years)
Ellen Ueberschär is a German Evangelical Theologian. Early life and education Ueberschär was born in 1967 in East Berlin where she also grew up. After finishing school she intended to study medicine, yet the East German authorities refused permission. In 1988 she began to study theology at the Sprachenkonvikt Berlin. After reunification she continued her studies at Heidelberg University as well as in Berlin, graduating in 1995.
Go to Profile#73
J. Cheryl Exum
#51343
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Jo Cheryl Exum is a feminist biblical scholar. She is currently Emeritus Professor at the University of Sheffield. Education and career Exum studied at Wake Forest University, where she received her BA, and Columbia University, where she received her MA and PhD. Previously, she taught at Boston College. She served as part of the translation team for the New Revised Standard Version. While at Sheffield, Exum served as Director of the university's Centre for the Study of the Bible in the Modern World. In 2004, Exum co-founded Sheffield Phoenix Press, an academic publisher of books in biblical studies, along with David J.
Go to Profile#74
Adele Berlin
#48285
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Adele Berlin is an American biblical scholar and Hebraist. Before her retirement, she was Robert H. Smith Professor of Biblical Studies at the University of Maryland. Berlin is best known for 1994 work Poetics and interpretation of biblical narrative . She has also written commentaries on Zephaniah, Esther, and Lamentations. A Festschrift in her honor, "Built by Wisdom, Established by Understanding": Essays in Honor of Adele Berlin, was published in 2013.
Go to Profile#75
Jan Willis
#54170
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Janice Dean Willis, or Jan Willis is Professor of Religion at Wesleyan University, where she has taught since 1977; and the author of books on Tibetan Buddhism. She has been called influential by Time Magazine, Newsweek , and Ebony Magazine. Aetna Inc.'s 2011 African American History Calendar features professor Willis as one of thirteen distinguished leaders of faith-based health initiatives in the United States.
Go to Profile#76
Mercy Oduyoye
#58669
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (90 years)
Mercy Amba Ewudziwa Oduyoye is a Ghanaian Methodist theologian known for her work in African women's theologies and theological anthropology. She is currently the Director of the Institute of African Women in Religion and Culture at Trinity Theological Seminary, Ghana. She founded the Circle of Concerned African Theologians in Ghana in 1987 to promote the visibility and publishing agenda of African women Theologians.
Go to Profile#77
Paula Gooder
#47586
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
Paula Gooder is a British theologian and Anglican lay reader, who specialises in the New Testament. She is Canon Chancellor of St Paul's Cathedral. She has previously taught at two theological colleges, Ripon College Cuddesdon and The Queen's Foundation, served as Theologian in Residence for the Bible Society , and as Director of Mission, Learning and Development in the Diocese of Birmingham . She is a freelance writer and speaker.
Go to Profile#78
Enkyo Pat O'Hara
#57912
Overall Influence
Enkyō Pat O'Hara is a Soto Zen priest and teacher in the Harada-Yasutani lineage of Zen Buddhism. Biography Growing up as a young white girl in Tijuana, Mexico while attending Catholic School in the United States, O’Hara was far too familiar with racism and prejudice. With one foot in each world, racial slurs and comments that were made to her left her feeling ostracized and insecure. However, it wasn’t until her high school years when she discovered and entered the Beat Generation and took to reading various literature including poems by Gary Snyder, who gave way to new ways of thought. It also in her high school years when she read R.H.
Go to Profile#79
Grace Ji-Sun Kim
#64045
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
Grace Ji-Sun Kim is a Korean-American theologian and Professor of Theology at Earlham School of Religion, Richmond, Indiana. She is best known for books and articles on the social and religious experiences of Korean women immigrants to North America.
Go to Profile#80
Gisela Forster
#52666
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Gisela Forster is a German writer, teacher, and Catholic theologian. Life Forster was born in Munich to parents from Bavaria and Hungary. After school at the Elsa-Brändström-Gymnasium in Munich-Pasing, Forster studied Catholic theology, philosophy, arts and architecture at the Technical University of Munich. After graduating, Forster worked as teacher at the Benedictine Schäftlarn school from 1972 to 1989. In 1989, Forster left the job to marry Anselm Forster, with whom she had two children. She was elected to the district council of Starnberg in 1989, serving as chairman on the council until 2002.
Go to Profile#81
Pheme Perkins
#39453
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Pheme Perkins is a Professor of Theology at Boston College, where she has been teaching since 1972. She is a nationally recognized expert on the Greco-Roman cultural setting of early Christianity, as well as the Pauline Epistles and Gnosticism.
Go to Profile#82
Elisabeth Dons Christensen
#63945
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Elisabeth Dons Christensen is a Danish Lutheran theologian who served as bishop for the Diocese of Ribe from 2003 until her retirement in 2014 at the age of 70. Biography Dons Christensen was one of several brothers and sisters, born and raised in the country village of Vester Ørum near Vejle in the east of Jutland. She studied history and religious studies at Aarhus University, graduating in 1973. She received a doctorate in theology in 1993. From 1973, she was a high school and theological college teacher in Esbjerg and Ribe. During the same period, she served as an assistant pastor in Ribe Cathedral.
Go to Profile#83
Mary E. Hunt
#35110
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Mary E. Hunt is an American feminist theologian who is co-founder and co-director of the Women's Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual in Silver Spring, Maryland, US. A Catholic active in the women-church movement, she lectures and writes on theology and ethics with particular attention to social justice concerns.
Go to Profile#84
Katherine Sonderegger
#68817
Overall Influence
Katherine Sonderegger is William Meade Chair in Systematic Theology at Virginia Theological Seminary. Biography Sonderegger received her AB in Medieval Studies from Smith College , an M.Div. and STM at Yale Divinity School, and a Ph.D. from Brown University in Western Religious Thought . Her Ph.D. dissertation was revised and published as That Jesus Christ was Born a Jew: Karl Barth's Doctrine of Israel . She has taught at Middlebury College and Bangor Theological Seminary and, since 2002, at Virginia Theological Seminary, where she became the William Meade Professor in 2014. She was ordai...
Go to Profile#85
Katie Cannon
#24874
Overall Influence
1949 - 2018 (69 years)
Katie Geneva Cannon was an American Christian theologian and ethicist associated with womanist theology and black theology. In 1974 she became the first African-American woman ordained in the United Presbyterian Church .
Go to Profile#86
Adela Yarbro Collins
#46140
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Adela Yarbro Collins is an American author and academic, who has served as the Buckingham Professor of New Testament Criticism and Interpretation at Yale Divinity School. Her research focuses on the New Testament, especially the Gospel of Mark and the Book of Revelation, and she has also written on early Christian apocalypticism and eschatology. Collins has also served as the President of the Society of New Testament Studies and as the President of the New England Region of the Society of Biblical Literature .
Go to Profile#87
Barbara Stühlmeyer
#29240
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Barbara Stühlmeyer OblOSB is a German theologian, musicologist, author, especially a Hildegard scholar and a science journalism. Biography Stühlmeyer was born in Bremen. After completing her A levels at the Altes Gymnasium in Bremen and her organ studies with church music director Winfrid Langosz, whom she assisted at the Catholic Provost church St. John's Bremen, she studied Christian music at the University of the Arts Bremen . During her scientific studies from 1988 to 1994 she studied Catholic theology with Arnold Angenendt and Klemens Richter, philosophy with Berthhold Wald and musicology with Axel Beer and Winfried Schepporst at the Westfaelische Wilhelms Universitaet in Muenster.
Go to Profile#88
Marianne Thompson
#49904
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Marianne Meye Thompson is an American theologian, currently the George Eldon Ladd Professor of New Testament at Fuller Theological Seminary. She was one of the translators for the Gospel of John for the New Living Translation Bible.
Go to Profile#89
Ursula Niebuhr
#23686
Overall Influence
1907 - 1997 (90 years)
Ursula Mary Niebuhr was an English American academic and theologian. She was the founder and longtime head of the Department of Religion at Barnard College in New York City, USA. She was born in Southampton, England. After graduation from the University of Oxford with double Firsts in history and theology, she became the first woman to win a fellowship to the Union Theological Seminary in New York, USA.
Go to Profile#90
Morwenna Ludlow
#53864
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (54 years)
Morwenna Ann Ludlow is a British historian, theologian, and Anglican priest, specialising in historical theology. She is Professor of Christian History and Theology at the University of Exeter. She is known in particular for her work on Gregory of Nyssa.
Go to Profile#91
Mildred Bangs Wynkoop
#46165
Overall Influence
1905 - 1997 (92 years)
Mildred Olive Bangs Wynkoop was an ordained minister in the Church of the Nazarene, who served as an educator, missionary, theologian, and the author of several books. Donald Dayton indicates that "Probably most influential for a new generation of Holiness scholars has been the work of Nazarene theologian Mildred Bangs Wynkoop, especially her book A Theology of Love: The Dynamic of Wesleyanism." The Wynkoop Center for Women in Ministry located in Kansas City, Missouri, is named in her honour. The Timothy L. Smith and Mildred Bangs Wynkoop Book Award of the Wesleyan Theological Society also jo...
Go to Profile#92
Virginia Fabella
#69174
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Virginia Fabella, M. M. is a Filipina theologian and Maryknoll sister, known for her works in Asian feminist theology and postcolonial theology. Biography Fabella was born in Manila, Philippines. After graduating from the Assumption Convent in Manila and receiving a BS from Mt. St. Vincent College in New York, Fabella joined the Maryknoll Sisters in 1952. She would later receive an MA in Religious Studies from the Maryknoll Seminary in 1980, a Certificate in Pastoral Studies from Union Theological in Chicago in 1988, and a DMin in Women’s Studies from San Francisco Theological Seminary in 1993.
Go to Profile#93
Elisabeth Moltmann-Wendel
#63494
Overall Influence
1926 - 2016 (90 years)
Elisabeth Moltmann-Wendel was a German feminist theologian, best remembered as the founder of the European Society of Women in Theological Research in 1986. Her publications translated into English include Liberty, Equality, Sisterhood: The Women around Jesus, A Land Flowing with Milk and Honey, I Am My Body, and Rediscovering Friendship.
Go to Profile#94
Ellen F. Davis
#41159
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Ellen F. Davis is an American theologian and Old Testament scholar. She is the Amos Ragan Kearns Distinguished Professor of Bible and Practical Theology at Duke Divinity School. Biography Davis has degrees from University of California, Berkeley , the Church Divinity School of the Pacific and Yale University . She previously taught at Union Theological Seminary , Yale Divinity School, and Virginia Theological Seminary.
Go to Profile#95
Susan Ashbrook Harvey
#68847
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Susan Ashbrook Harvey is the Royce Family Professor of Teaching Excellence and the Willard Prescott and Annie McClelland Smith Professor of History and Religion at Brown University. She specializes in late antique and Byzantine Christianity, with Syriac studies as her particular focus.
Go to Profile#96
Mary Elizabeth Moore
#64391
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Mary Elizabeth Moore is an educator, writer, and current dean of the Boston University School of Theology in Boston, Massachusetts. She has also been a professor of religion and education at the Claremont School of Theology, as well as Emory University, where she served as the director of the Women in Theology and Ministry Program. Moore has written on topics of socio-economic justice, and socio-ecological renewal, and throughout her career has significantly contributed to the dialogue between theology and education.
Go to Profile#97
Elizabeth Johnson
#43553
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Elizabeth A. Johnson is a Roman Catholic feminist theologian. She is a Distinguished Professor Emerita of Theology at Fordham University, a Jesuit institution in New York City and a member of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Brentwood. The National Catholic Reporter has called Johnson "one of the country's most prominent and respected theologians."
Go to Profile#98
Beverly Mortensen
#36611
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Beverly P. Mortensen is a musician, composer, and scholar of ancient Jewish religion at Northwestern University. In 2006, she published the book The Priesthood in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan: Renewing the Profession , in which she strongly argues her thesis, that Targum Pseudo-Jonathan is a late 4th-century CE work and is meant as a manual for kohanim, Jewish priests.
Go to Profile#99
Elsa Támez
#68863
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Elsa Támez is a Mexican liberation theologian and biblical scholar. Her writings on feminist theology and contextual biblical criticisms brought new perspectives to these fields of study, laying the foundation for later scholars. Her books include Bible of the Oppressed, The Amnesty of Grace, and Struggles for Power in Early Christianity: A Study of the First Letter of Timothy . She is Professor Emerita at the Universidad Biblica Latinamericana in Costa Rica. She was appointed president of Universidad Biblica Latinamericana in 1995, becoming their first woman president.
Go to Profile#100
Beverly Roberts Gaventa
#53429
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Beverly Roberts Gaventa is Distinguished Professor of New Testament Interpretation at Baylor University and Helen H.P. Manson Professor of New Testament Literature and Exegesis Emerita at Princeton Theological Seminary.
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