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 people in Religious Studies,
#701
Richard McBrien
#31674
Overall Influence
1936 - 2015 (79 years)
Richard Peter McBrien was a Catholic priest, theologian, and writer, who was the Crowley-O'Brien Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, U.S. He authored twenty-five books, including the very popular Catholicism, a reference text on the Church after the Second Vatican Council.
Go to Profile#702
Richard Rice
#46146
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
T. Richard Rice is an American Seventh-day Adventist theologian and author. He is a leading proponent of "open theism". As of 2007 he is professor of theology and philosophy of religion at Loma Linda University in California.
Go to Profile#703
Michael Lerner
#10914
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Michael Lerner is an American political activist, the editor of Tikkun, a progressive Jewish interfaith magazine based in Berkeley, California, and the rabbi of Beyt Tikkun Synagogue in Berkeley. Biography
Go to Profile#704
Víctor Manuel Fernández
#31306
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Víctor Manuel "Tucho" Fernández is an Argentine prelate of the Catholic Church and a theologian. He served as rector of the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina from December 2009 to April 2018. He was named Archbishop of La Plata on 2 June 2018. On 1 July 2023, Pope Francis named Fernández prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith as of mid-September. Pope Francis made Fernández a cardinal on 30 September 2023.
Go to Profile#705
Roger T. Forster
#51288
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (91 years)
Roger Thomas Forster was the founder of Ichthus Christian Fellowship, a neocharismatic Evangelical Christian Church that forms part of the British New Church Movement. In 1965 he married Faith Forster and has three children.
Go to Profile#706
Pinchas Lapide
#24288
Overall Influence
1922 - 1997 (75 years)
Pinchas Lapide was a Jewish theologian and Israeli historian. He was an Israeli diplomat from 1951 to 1969, among other position acting as Israeli Consul to Milan, and was instrumental in gaining recognition for the young state of Israel. He wrote more than 35 books during his lifetime. Lapide was married to Ruth Lapide with whom he shared his interests and endeavors.
Go to Profile#707
David Neiman
#42406
Overall Influence
1921 - 2004 (83 years)
David Neiman was a renowned scholar in the fields of Biblical Studies, Jewish history, and the long and often complicated relationship between the Catholic Church and the Jews. Early life and education Born in Russia in 1921, he escaped from the Soviet Union to the United States with his family in 1923. Raised in Brooklyn, New York in a traditional, observant Jewish family, Neiman studied in a Yeshiva elementary school, attended public high school and enrolled in City College of New York in 1938
Go to Profile#708
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#709
Michael V. Fox
#44459
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
Michael V. Fox is an American biblical scholar. He is a Halls-Bascom Professor Emeritus in the Department of Hebrew and Semitic Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Fox has been described as a "highly regarded authority on biblical wisdom literature."
Go to Profile#710
Klaus Berger
#21737
Overall Influence
1940 - 2020 (80 years)
Klaus Berger was a German academic theologian. Berger was Professor of New Testament Theology at the University of Heidelberg. Biography He is known for his study and publications on the New Testament. He had been quoted in several Catholic news sources to the effect that he was Catholic or somehow "both Catholic and Protestant." This idea was rejected by the Roman Catholic Church and, after this controversy, he left the Protestant Church in Baden and became a member once more of the Roman Catholic Church .
Go to Profile#711
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#712
Richard Longenecker
#37466
Overall Influence
1930 - 2021 (91 years)
Richard N. Longenecker was a New Testament scholar. He held teaching positions at Wheaton College and Graduate School ; Trinity Evangelical Divinity School ; Wycliffe College ; University of St. Michael’s College ; and McMaster Divinity College . His education included B.A. and M.A. degrees from Wheaton College, and a Ph.D. from New College in the University of Edinburgh.
Go to Profile#713
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#714
Nicholas Lash
#21338
Overall Influence
1934 - 2020 (86 years)
Nicholas Langrishe Alleyne Lash was an English Roman Catholic theologian. Having served in the British Army, he trained for Holy Orders at St Mary's College, Oscott, and worked as a Catholic priest until 1975. He left the priesthood and turned to full-time academia, working as a lecturer and then Norris–Hulse Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge.
Go to Profile#715
John Bowker
#33528
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (89 years)
John Westerdale Bowker is an English Anglican priest and pioneering scholar of religious studies. A former Director of Studies and Dean of Chapel at Corpus Christi and Trinity College, Cambridge he is credited with introducing religious studies as a discipline to Cambridge University. He has been a Professor of religious studies at the universities of Cambridge, Lancaster, Pennsylvania and North Carolina State University. He is an Honorary Canon of Canterbury Cathedral, a consultant for UNESCO, a BBC broadcaster and author and editor of numerous books.
Go to Profile#716
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#717
John M. Oesterreicher
#28813
Overall Influence
1904 - 1993 (89 years)
Monsignor John Maria Oesterreicher , born Johannes Oesterreicher, was a Catholic theologian and a leading advocate of Jewish–Catholic reconciliation. He was one of the architects of Nostra aetate or "In Our Age," a declaration which was issued by the Second Vatican Council in 1965 and which repudiated antisemitism.
Go to Profile#718
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#719
Harold A. Netland
#29227
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Harold A. Netland , is a missionary educator turned academic. He is the author or editor of nine books and many journal articles on the topic of religion and philosophy. Career Netland did his undergraduate work at Biola University and received his M.A. and Ph.D. from Claremont Graduate University. He worked in Japan for the Evangelical Free Church of America for nine years. In 1993 he moved back to the United States and joined Trinity Evangelical Divinity School as Professor of Philosophy of Religion and Intercultural Studies. He is the Director of the PhD/Intercultural Studies program at 'T...
Go to Profile#720
Patrick D. Miller
#38062
Overall Influence
1935 - 2020 (85 years)
Patrick D. Miller, Jr. was an American Old Testament scholar who served as Charles T. Haley Professor of Old Testament Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary from 1984 to 2005. He was an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church .
Go to Profile#721
Kurt Marti
#18526
Overall Influence
1921 - 2017 (96 years)
Kurt Marti was a Swiss theologian and poet. His poetry often has theological and religious aspects to it. He is also known for dialect literature said to have intellectual quality. Marti attended the Freie Gymnasium in Bern together with Friedrich Dürrenmatt. He then completed two semesters at the law faculty of the University of Bern before deciding to study Protestant theology.
Go to Profile#722
David Brown
#26932
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
David William Brown is an Anglican priest and British scholar of philosophy, theology, religion, and the arts. He taught at the universities of Oxford, Durham, and St. Andrews before retiring in 2015. He is well-known for his "non-punitive theory of purgatory, his defense of specific versions of social Trinitarianism and kenotic Christology, his distinctive theory of divine revelation as mediated fallibly through both tradition and imagination, and his proposals regarding a pervasive sacramentality discerned in nature and human culture alike."
Go to Profile#723
Herman Nicolaas Ridderbos
#64324
Overall Influence
1909 - 2007 (98 years)
Herman Nicolaas Ridderbos was a Dutch theologian and biblical scholar. He was an important New Testament theologian, having worked extensively on the history of salvation and biblical theology. Ridderbos was born in Hennaarderadeel, Friesland, Netherlands. His father, Jan Ridderbos, was an ordained minister in the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands, a biblical commentator, and professor of Old Testament at the Theological School of the Reformed Churches of the Netherlands in Kampen. Herman Ridderbos completed his undergraduate studies there, and did his post-graduate work at the Free University of Amsterdam under F.
Go to Profile#724
Eugene Ulrich
#39534
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (86 years)
Eugene Charles Ulrich is an American Dead Sea scrolls scholar and the John A. O'Brien Professor emeritus of Hebrew Scripture and Theology in the Department of Theology at the University of Notre Dame. He is chief editor of the biblical texts of the Dead Sea scrolls and one of the three general editors of the Scrolls International Publication Project. Ulrich has worked under two editors in chief on the scrolls project, namely John Strugnell and Emanuel Tov.
Go to Profile#725
Rubel Shelly
#24371
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Dr. Rubel Shelly is an author, minister, and professor at Lipscomb University. He is the former president of Rochester University . Life Shelly began as an instructor in the department of Religion and Philosophy at Freed-Hardeman University in 1975. In 1978, Shelly began preaching as Senior Minister for the Family of God at Woodmont Hills, formerly known as the Woodmont Hills Church of Christ, in Nashville, Tennessee where he continued until 2005. While preaching at Woodmont Hills, he also taught at Lipscomb University, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, and Tennessee State University. ...
Go to Profile#726
Heribert Mühlen
#51415
Overall Influence
1927 - 2006 (79 years)
Heribert Mühlen was a German Roman-Catholic theologian. He was born in Mönchengladbach, studied in Bonn, Freiburg, Rome, Innsbruck, Münster und Munich, and was priest since 1955. Since 1962 Mühlen taught at the Divinity Faculty of the University Paderborn, where he later worked as Ordinarius für Dogmatik und Dogmengeschichte . During the Second Vatican Council, Pope Paul VI appointed Mühlen as one of the theological experts .
Go to Profile#727
Mieczyslaw Malinski
#45483
Overall Influence
1923 - 2017 (94 years)
Monsignor Mieczyslaw Malinski was a Polish Catholic priest, theologian and writer. Biography He was born in Kraków, Poland, and studied for the priesthood alongside the future Pope John Paul II, whose close friend he is said to have been. Malinski studied theology at the Jagellonian University and he was ordained on 24 July 1949. He also completed further studies in Rome, Munich and Münster, producing a successful doctoral thesis on the concept of transcendence in the philosophy of Gabriel Marcel.
Go to Profile#728
Theodore Jennings
#30803
Overall Influence
1942 - 2020 (78 years)
Theodore Wesley Jennings Jr. , also known as Ted Jennings, was an American theologian and Methodist minister. He was Professor of Biblical and Constructive Theology at the United Church of Christ's Chicago Theological Seminary, where he had previously served as Acting Academic Dean. Jennings gained a notoriety for his work on ritual studies, the Messianic politics of Pauline discourse, and theological engagement with the work of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Jacques Derrida.
Go to Profile#729
George Tinker
#36764
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
George E. "Tink" Tinker is an American Indian scholar of the Osage Nation who taught for more than three decades at the Iliff School of Theology, a United Methodist Church theological school, where he focused his scholarship on the decolonization of American Indian Peoples. The Tinker family name is deeply embedded among the Osage.
Go to Profile#730
Iain Torrance
#36257
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Iain Richard Torrance, is a retired Church of Scotland minister, theologian and academic. He is Pro-Chancellor of the University of Aberdeen, Honorary Professor of Early Christian Doctrine and Ethics at the University of Edinburgh, President and Professor of Patristics Emeritus at Princeton Theological Seminary, and an Extra Chaplain to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in Scotland. He was formerly Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, Dean of the Chapel Royal in Scotland, and Dean of the Order of the Thistle. He is married to Morag Ann , whom he met while they were stude...
Go to Profile#731
David Noel Freedman
#34647
Overall Influence
1922 - 2008 (86 years)
David Noel Freedman was an American biblical scholar, author, editor, archaeologist, and, after his conversion from Judaism, a Presbyterian minister. He was one of the first Americans to work on the Dead Sea Scrolls. He is the son of the writer David Freedman. He died of a heart ailment.
Go to Profile#732
Andrey Kuraev
#26169
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Andrey Vyacheslavovich Kuraev is an Orthodox theologian and missionary and a defrocked Protodeacon of the Russian Orthodox Church. Biography Kuraev studied at the Moscow Theological Academy Seminary between 1985 and 1988, and graduated from the Moscow Theological Academy in 1992. He studied at the Bucharest Theological Institute, Bucharest, Romania between 1988 and 1990.
Go to Profile#733
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#734
Ryuichi Abe
#49814
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Ryūichi Abe is the Reischauer Institute Professor of Japanese Religions at Harvard University. Until May 2004, he was professor of Japanese religions in the departments of religion and East Asian languages and culture at Columbia University.
Go to Profile#735
Leonard Sweet
#25403
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Leonard I. Sweet is an American theologian, semiotician, church historian, pastor, and author. Sweet currently serves as the E. Stanley Jones Professor Emeritus at Drew Theological School at Drew University, in Madison, New Jersey; Charles Wesley Distinguished Professor of Doctoral Studies at Evangelical Seminary; Distinguished Visiting Professor at Tabor College; and Visiting Distinguished Professor at George Fox University in Portland, Oregon. Sweet is ordained in the United Methodist Church.
Go to Profile#736
Graham Tomlin
#50070
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Graham Stuart Tomlin is a British theologian, author and Church of England bishop. Since 2022, he has led the Centre for Cultural Witness; he served as Bishop of Kensington, an area bishop in the Diocese of London from 2015 until 2022. From 2007 until 2015, he was dean then principal of St Mellitus College and is now its president.
Go to Profile#737
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#738
Marc Zvi Brettler
#42400
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Marc Brettler is an American biblical scholar, and the Bernice and Morton Lerner Professor in Judaic Studies at Duke University. He earned his B.A., M.A., and PhD from Brandeis University, where he previously served as Dora Golding Professor of Biblical Studies. He researches biblical metaphors, the Bible and gender, biblical historical texts, the book of Psalms, and the post-biblical reception of the Hebrew Bible, including in the New Testament. He is a co-founder of the website thetorah.com, which integrates critical and traditional methods of studying the Bible.
Go to Profile#739
Dennis Nineham
#34183
Overall Influence
1921 - 2016 (95 years)
Dennis Eric Nineham was a British theologian and academic, who served as Warden of Keble College, Oxford, from 1969 to 1979, as well as holding chairs in theology at the universities of London, Cambridge, and Bristol.
Go to Profile#740
Vernon Grounds
#35366
Overall Influence
1914 - 2010 (96 years)
Dr. Vernon Carl Grounds was an American theologian, Christian educator, Chancellor of Denver Seminary, and one of the leaders in the development of American evangelicalism. Early life and education Grounds was born July 19, 1914, in Jersey City, New Jersey, the youngest of three children born to John and Bertha Grounds. He studied at Rutgers University and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1937, then studied theology at Faith Theological Seminary in Wilmington, Delaware and obtained a Bachelor of Divinity. He was part of a group that included notable evangelical leaders such as Arthur Glasser, Kenneth Kantzer, Joseph Bayly, and Francis Schaeffer.
Go to Profile#741
Hilarion
#25190
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Hilarion is a bishop of the Russian Orthodox Church and the current metropolitan of Budapest and Hungary. He is also a noted theologian, church historian and composer and has published books on dogmatic theology, patristics and church history as well as numerous compositions for choir and orchestra.
Go to Profile#742
Johann Maier
#52479
Overall Influence
1933 - 2019 (86 years)
Johann Maier was an Austrian scholar of Judaism, and was founder and, for thirty years, director of the Martin Buber Institute for Jewish Studies at the University of Cologne. He retired in 1996, and was living in Mittenwald, in Upper Bavaria.
Go to Profile#743
Gerald James Larson
#25232
Overall Influence
1938 - 2019 (81 years)
Gerald James Larson was an Indologist known for his writings about Indian religions. He was the Rabindranath Tagore Professor Emeritus of Indian Cultures and Civilization at Indiana University, Bloomington as well as Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Go to Profile#744
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#745
Joerg Rieger
#43110
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Joerg Michael Rieger is a German and American professor of Christian theology whose work emphasizes economic justice and political movements. Rieger is also an ordained minister of the United Methodist Church.
Go to Profile#746
Herbert Vorgrimler
#53665
Overall Influence
1929 - 2014 (85 years)
Herbert Vorgrimler was a Catholic theologian and author who published over 90 books in German, 33 of which were translated into English. Works Vorgrimler is known for his collaboration in 1965 with Karl Rahner, SJ, on the Theological Dictionary.
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John Gee
#39899
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
John Laurence Gee is an American Latter-day Saint scholar, apologist and an Egyptologist. He currently teaches at Brigham Young University and serves in the Department of Near Eastern Languages. He is known for his writings in support of the Book of Abraham.
Go to Profile#748
John E. Sanders
#37859
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
John E. Sanders is an American Christian theologian. He currently serves as professor of religious studies at Hendrix College. Sanders is best known for his promotion of open theism but he has also written on cognitive linguistics and religious pluralism .
Go to Profile#749
Michael Himes
#62039
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Father Michael Himes was a priest of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn, New York. Himes was a theologian at Boston College in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. He served as professor and academic dean of the Seminary of Immaculate Conception on Long Island, New York, and as associate professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame.
Go to Profile#750
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.
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