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.
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List of the most influential people in Religious Studies,
#6001
Alexander Kohut
1842 - 1894 (52 years)
Alexander Kohut was a rabbi and orientalist. He belonged to a family of rabbis, the most noted among them being Rabbi Israel Palota, his great-grandfather, Rabbi Amram , and Rabbi Chayyim Kitssee, rabbi in Erza, who was his great-granduncle. The last-named was the author of several rabbinic works.
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Johann Leonhard Hug
1765 - 1846 (81 years)
Johann Leonhard Hug , was a German Roman Catholic theologian, orientalist and biblical scholar. Life In 1783 he entered the University of Freiburg, where he became a pupil in the seminary for the training of priests, and soon distinguished himself in classical and Oriental philology as well as in biblical exegesis and criticism. In 1787 he became superintendent of studies in the seminary, and held this appointment until the breaking up of the establishment in 1790. In the following year he was called to the Freiburg chair of Oriental languages and Old Testament exegesis; to the duties of this ...
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Heinrich Weinel
1874 - 1936 (62 years)
Heinrich Weinel was a German Protestant theologian. Biography He studied at the universities of Berlin and Giessen, and in 1900 became an inspector of evangelical-theological seminaries in Bonn. From 1904 he was an associate professor at the University of Jena, where in 1907 he became a full professor of New Testament studies. Beginning in 1926 he taught classes in systematic theology at Jena. He was co-founder of the Freien Volkskirche, whose magazine he published from 1919.
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Karl Theodor Keim
1825 - 1878 (53 years)
Karl Theodor Keim was a German Protestant theologian. He was born at Stuttgart. His father, Johann Christian Keim, was headmaster of a gymnasium. Here Karl Theodor received his early education, and then proceeded to the Stuttgart Obergymnasium. In 1843 he went to the university of Tübingen, where he studied philosophy under J. F. Reiff, a follower of Hegel, and Oriental languages under Heinrich Ewald and Heinrich Meier. F. C. Baur, the leader of the new Tübingen school, was lecturing on the New Testament and on the history of the church and of dogma, and by him in particular Keim was greatly ...
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Girolamo Aleandro
1480 - 1542 (62 years)
Girolamo Aleandro was an Italian humanist, linguist, and cardinal. Life Aleandro was born on 13 February 1480 in Motta di Livenza, in the province of Treviso, part of the Republic of Venice. The son of a doctor, he studied medicine, philology, and theology in Padua. In Venice he became acquainted with Erasmus and Aldus Manutius, and at an early age was reputed one of the most learned men of the time, with a knowledge of Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and Chaldaean. In 1508 he went to Paris on the invitation of Louis XII as professor of belles lettres, and from 1513 to 1516 held the position of Rector of the University of Paris at the Sorbonne.
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Samuel Merrill Woodbridge
1819 - 1905 (86 years)
The Reverend Samuel Merrill Woodbridge, D.D., LL.D. was an American clergyman, theologian, author, and college professor. A graduate of New York University and the New Brunswick Theological Seminary, Woodbridge preached for sixteen years as a clergyman in the Reformed Church in America.
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János Apáczai Csere
1625 - 1659 (34 years)
János Apáczai Csere was a Transylvanian Hungarian polyglot, pedagogist, philosopher and theologian, famous for his work The Hungarian Encyclopedia, the first textbook to be written in Hungarian. The Encyclopædia Britannica calls him "the leading Protestant scholar and writer" of 17th-century Hungary.
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Johannes Maccovius
1588 - 1644 (56 years)
Johannes Maccovius , also known as Jan Makowski, was a Polish Reformed theologian. Early travels and personal life Makowski was born in Lobzenica, Poland. After visiting various universities and as the tutor of young Polish nobles, holding disputations with Jesuits and Socinians, Maccovius entered the University of Franeker in the Netherlands, in 1613. There he became privat-docent in 1614 and professor of theology in 1615. In later years, the fame of Maccovius attracted many students to Franeker, where he spent the rest of his life.
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Jeremiah Chaplin
1776 - 1841 (65 years)
Jeremiah Chaplin was a Reformed Baptist theologian who served as the first president of Colby College in Maine. Chaplin was born in Rowley, Massachusetts in 1776 to a Baptist family. He attended Brown University, a school with an historical Baptist affiliation, graduating in 1799 with a Bachelor of Arts. Chaplin spent a year at Brown as a tutor and pursued additional theological study to become a minister. To this end, he studied under Thomas Baldwin of the Second Baptist Church in Boston.
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Hans Frei
1922 - 1988 (66 years)
Hans Wilhelm Frei was an American biblical scholar and theologian who is best known for work on biblical hermeneutics. Frei's work played a major role in the development of postliberal theology . His best-known and most influential work is his 1974 book, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative , which examined the history of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century biblical hermeneutics in England and Germany. Frei spent much of his career teaching at Yale Divinity School.
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Edmond Richer
1559 - 1631 (72 years)
Edmond Richer was a French theologian known for several works advocating the Gallican theory, that the pope's power was limited by authority of bishops, and by temporal governments. He was born in Chaource.
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Abraham Scultetus
1566 - 1625 (59 years)
Abraham Scultetus was a German professor of theology, and the court preacher for the Elector of the Palatinate Frederick V. Biography Early life Abraham was born in Grünberg in Schlesien in Silesia and was brought up as a Lutheran. He began his studies in theology in 1588 in Wittenberg and then in 1590 in Heidelberg. When he became Reformed and gave up his Lutheranism is unknown. By 1595 he was working for the Elector of the Palatinate, who at that time was Frederick IV. He continued to serve the churches of the Palatinate and accompanied Frederick V on his honeymoon with his wife Elisabeth, daughter of King James I of England, in 1613.
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David Cohen
1887 - 1972 (85 years)
David Cohen was a rabbi, talmudist, philosopher, kabbalist, and a disciple of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook. A noted Jewish ascetic, he took a Nazirite vow at the outbreak of World War I. Education Cohen was born in Maišiagala, near Vilna , the scion of a distinguished rabbinic family. In his youth he studied at the Raduń Yeshiva under Rabbi Yisrael Meir Kagan, at the Volozhin yeshiva, and at the yeshiva in Slabodka. Even at that time, his restless and inquiring mind led him to extend his studies beyond the traditional subjects taught in the yeshivot. Thus he turned to Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch and the early writings of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook.
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Leon J. Wood
1918 - 1977 (59 years)
Leon James Wood was an American theologian. He is the author of one of the few books on the Holy Spirit as portrayed in the Old Testament as opposed to the New Testament. Wood wrote, "The evidence that spiritual renewal, or regeneration, was true of such Old Testament people lies mainly in two directions. One is that these people lived in a way possible only for those who had experienced regeneration, and the other is the avenue of logical deduction that argues back from New Testament truth."
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Erik Peterson
1890 - 1960 (70 years)
Erik Peterson Grandjean was a German Catholic theologian,patrologist and Church historian. Biography Erik Peterson was born in Hamburg. He studied theology from 1910 to 1914 in Strasbourg, Greifswald, Berlin, Basel and Göttingen, where he defended his doctoral dissertation in 1926. He was initially an evangelical Christian influenced by pietism and Søren Kierkegaard. Through the influence of phenomenology in Göttingen, Edmund Husserl, Adolf Reinach, Hedwig Conrad-Martius, Hans Lipps, Theodor Haecker, Max Scheler, Carl Schmitt, Jacques Maritain and the Liturgical Movement, he opened up to the Catholic world.
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Lelio Sozzini
1525 - 1562 (37 years)
Lelio Francesco Maria Sozzini, or simply Lelio Sozzini , was an Italian Renaissance humanist and theologian, and, alongside his nephew Fausto Sozzini, founder of the Nontrinitarian Christian belief system known as Socinianism. His doctrine was developed among the Polish Brethren in the Polish Reformed Church between the 16th and 17th centuries, and embraced by the Unitarian Church of Transylvania during the same period.
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Jean-Alphonse Turrettini
1671 - 1737 (66 years)
Jean-Alphonse Turrettini was a theologian from the Republic of Geneva. The son of François Turrettini, he was born in Geneva. He studied theology at Geneva under Louis Tronchin , and after travelling in Holland, England and France was received into the "Vénérable Compagnie des Pasteurs" of Geneva in 1693. Here he became pastor of the Italian congregation, and in 1697 professor of church history, and later of theology.
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Margaret Dunlop Gibson
1843 - 1920 (77 years)
#6019
Bernard of Chartres
1070 - 1130 (60 years)
Bernard of Chartres was a twelfth-century French Neo-Platonist philosopher, scholar, and administrator. Life The date and place of his birth are unknown. He was believed to have been the elder brother of Thierry of Chartres and to be of Breton origin, but research has shown that this is unlikely. He is recorded at the cathedral school of Chartres by 1115 and was chancellor until 1124. There is no proof that he was still alive after 1124.
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Georg Fritze
1874 - 1939 (65 years)
Georg Fritze was a German theologian, Protestant pastor, religious socialist and anti-fascist. Career Fritze studied Evangelical Theology in Halle and Marburg. He sat his first theological exam in the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg in 1896, and his second exam in the University of Marburg in 1898. He then did military service from 1889 to 1890. He became an assistant preacher, and later "second pastor" in the Belgian Mission Church in Charleroi , where he ordained on September 30, 1900 . After four years he returned to the Prussian Provincial Church in Saxony, where he made up the vicariate.
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James Bannerman
1807 - 1868 (61 years)
James Bannerman was a Scottish theologian. He is best known for his classic work on Presbyterian ecclesiology, The Church of Christ. Life Bannerman was the son of James Patrick Bannerman, minister of Cargill, Perthshire. He was born at the manse of Cargill on 9 April 1807, and after a distinguished career at the University of Edinburgh, especially in the classes of Sir John Leslie and Professor Wilson, became minister of Ormiston, in Midlothian, in 1833, left the Established Church for the Free Church in 1843, and in 1849 was appointed professor of apologetics and pastoral theology in the N...
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Carl Hildebrand von Canstein
1667 - 1719 (52 years)
Carl or Karl Hildebrand von Canstein , Baron or Count of Canstein, was a German aristocrat who founded the Canstein Bible Institute in Halle, Brandenburg-Prussia, the first modern Bible society. Life He was born at Lindenberg on 4 August 1667. He studied law at Alma Mater Viadrina in Frankfurt-on-the-Oder and, upon finishing his courses, he toured the Netherlands, England, France, Italy, and southern Germany from 1686 to 1688. On the death of the Great Elector Frederick William, he returned to Berlin.
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Henry Pereira Mendes
1852 - 1937 (85 years)
Henry Pereira Mendes , was an American rabbi who was born in Birmingham, England and died in New York City. He was also known as Haim Pereira Mendes. Family history and education Henry Pereira Mendes was born into an old Spanish & Portuguese rabbinic family. His father Abraham Pereira Mendes was Rabbi in Birmingham, England, as well as in Jamaica and the Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island. His grandfather David Aaron de Sola was the Rabbi at Bevis Marks Synagogue in London, and his great-grandfather Raphael Meldola was the Chief Sephardic Rabbi of London. In addition, his brother Frederi...
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Pierre Batiffol
1861 - 1929 (68 years)
Pierre Batiffol – was a French Catholic priest and prominent theologian, specialising in Church history. He had also a particular interest in the history of dogma. Batiffol studied from 1878 at the priest seminary Saint-Sulpice in Paris, was ordained in 1884 and continued his studies at the Institut catholique in Paris and at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes. He was taught by church historian Louis Marie Olivier Duchesne.
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