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,
#1051
Albert de Pury
#52976
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
Baron Albert de Pury is a Swiss biblical scholar, historian, and exegesis. A specialist in biblical history, and the literary and religious traditions of the ancient Ancient Near East, he has served on the faculty at the University of Geneva and the University of Neuchâtel as a professor of the Old Testament.
Go to Profile#1052
Knut A. Jacobsen
#53097
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Knut Axel Jacobsen is a Norwegian scholar of the history of religions and professor at the University of Bergen. He is a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. Career He has a PhD from the University of California, Santa Barbara , and has been professor at the University of Bergen since 1996. Jacobsen's areas of teaching include Hindu traditions, Sikhism, Jainism, Indian Buddhism and Indian philosophy.
Go to Profile#1053
Katherine K. Young
#33261
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Katherine K. Young is a Canadian religious studies professor at McGill University. Originally a scholar of Hinduism, in later life her interests have turned to the topic of misandry. Life She was awarded her M.A. from the University of Chicago and her Ph.D. from McGill University, for research on the history of religions, specializing in Hinduism. After completing her doctorate Young remained at McGill as a faculty member where she continues to teach.
Go to Profile#1054
Lewis Ayres
#56182
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Lewis Ayres, a lay Catholic theologian, is Professor of Catholic and Historical Theology at Durham University in the United Kingdom. Between 2009 and 2013 he served as the inaugural holder of the Bede Chair of Catholic Theology at Durham.
Go to Profile#1055
Yasin Dutton
#55696
Overall Influence
Yasin Dutton is the Azman Hashim Senior Research Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies and Emeritus Professor of Arabic in the School of Languages & Literature at the University of Cape Town. His research interests include early Quranic manuscripts and both classical and modern Islamic law, with an emphasis on economic and environmental issues.
Go to Profile#1056
Kevin J. Madigan
#47943
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Kevin J. Madigan is a historian of Christianity who has taught at Harvard University since 2000. A member of the Faculty of Divinity, he has also served on Harvard's Committee on the Study of Religion, the Medieval Studies Committee, and the Center for Jewish Studies. Since 2009, Madigan has been Winn Professor of Ecclesiastical History in Harvard Divinity School, an appointment offered by then-Dean of HDS, William Graham, and officially approved by Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust. He has been married for over thirty years to Stephanie Paulsell, Susan Shallcross Swartz Professor of the Practice of Christian Studies at HDS.
Go to Profile#1057
Franz Scholz
#63605
Overall Influence
1909 - 1998 (89 years)
Franz Scholz was a German priest and professor of theology from Breslau, Silesia. He had eight brothers and two sisters. His youngest brother Gerhard is now 86. He studied at Breslau's Catholic St.-Matthias-Gymnasium, then Caritas Science at Freiburg. He studied the Polish language at Kraków and Lublin. In 1934 he became a priest and took up a position as chaplain at Cross Church in Breslau. In this office Schulz attended to the spiritual needs of Polish seasonal workers in the Silesian capital city. After receiving his doctorate he transferred to St. Bonifacius Church in Görlitz.
Go to Profile#1058
William Storrar
#59638
Overall Influence
William F. Storrar is a Scottish Christian theologian who is the Director of Center of Theological Inquiry, known for his contribution on public theology. Biography He obtained his Doctor of Philosophy degree in practical theology at New College, University of Edinburgh, in 1993. He was ordained a minister in the Church of Scotland in 1984 and has served as a parish minister in Glasgow and Carluke for eight years.
Go to Profile#1059
M. Craig Barnes
#51331
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
M. Craig Barnes is an American Presbyterian minister and professor who served as president of Princeton Theological Seminary. Biography and Career Born on August 28, 1956, and raised on Long Island, Barnes attended The King's College in New York City, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in history, in 1978. He went on to graduate from Princeton Theological Seminary, in 1981, with a Master of Divinity degree. Barnes then earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree in the history of Christianity from the University of Chicago Divinity School, in 1992, under the supervision of Martin Marty.
Go to Profile#1060
Robert B. Sloan
#26867
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Robert Bryan Sloan Jr. is an American academic and theologian. He has been the president of Houston Christian University since 2006. Education and background Sloan was born in Coleman, Texas, and grew up in Abilene, Texas. He earned his B.A. from Baylor University in 1970, and his M.Div from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1973. After post-graduate research at the University of Bristol, he earned his D.Th., the Doktor der Theologie degree, from the University of Basel, Switzerland, in 1978.
Go to Profile#1061
Vincent Cornell
#52929
Overall Influence
Vincent Cornell is an American scholar of Islam. From 2000 to 2006 he was a professor of history and director of the King Fahd Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies at the University of Arkansas. He was an advisor to the award-winning, PBS-broadcast documentary Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet , produced by Unity Productions Foundation. He left Arkansas in 2006 to become a professor of history at Emory University, in Atlanta. Sufism and Islamic philosophy are among his specialities. His books are available in over 2,200 libraries.
Go to Profile#1062
Werner Jeanrond
#24586
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Werner Günter Adolf Jeanrond was Professor of Systematic Theology with special responsibility for Dogmatics at the University of Oslo. He is retired. Background Jeanrond is a German Roman Catholic theologian. He was born in 1955 in Saarbrücken in the Saar Protectorate, now Saarland, Germany. He was raised in Kleinblittersdorf, a village on the German-French border. His father served as the village's mayor twice. In 2018, he was appointed Professor of Systematic Theology with special responsibility for Dogmatics at the University of Oslo. He was the first Catholic theologian to hold this post in the university's traditionally Lutheran Faculty of Theology.
Go to Profile#1063
Einar Thomassen
#61952
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Einar Thomassen is a Norwegian religious studies scholar. Career Thomassen was in Bergen, and grew up in Laksevåg. He was taught Coptic, Greek and Latin already during Bergen Cathedral School. He studied in Sweden, France, and Scotland. He took the mag.art. degree at the University of Bergen, and the PhD at the University of St. Andrews.
Go to Profile#1064
Kenneth Cragg
#52529
Overall Influence
1913 - 2012 (99 years)
Albert Kenneth Cragg was an Anglican bishop and scholar who commented widely on religious topics for more than fifty years, most notably Christian–Muslim relations. Early life and education Cragg was born on 8 March 1913. He was educated at Blackpool Grammar School and Jesus College, Oxford. He was awarded the Grafton Scholarship in 1934.
Go to Profile#1065
John Feinberg
#48519
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
John Samuel Feinberg is an American theologian, author, and professor of biblical and systematic theology. He is currently listed as Professor of Biblical and Systematic Theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois. He is noted for his expertise in theodicy.
Go to Profile#1066
Gavin Ortlund
#69150
Overall Influence
Gavin R. Ortlund is a writer, a Christian theologian, a pastor at First Baptist Church of Ojai, California, and a Christian apologist. Ortlund is the author of seven books and multiple academic articles. He runs the YouTube channel Truth Unites, which is focused on the Christian life, apologetics and theology.
Go to Profile#1067
Nancy R. Howell
#39359
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Nancy R. Howell is an American professor of Theology and Philosophy of Religion at Saint Paul School of Theology in Kansas City, Missouri. Biography Howell earned a B.S. at The College of William and Mary, and a Th.M. and M.Div. at the Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. Howell earned a M.A. and Ph.D. at Claremont Graduate School. During her doctoral studies she studied with, and was the teaching assistant for, John B. Cobb. She initially worked as the academic dean of Saint Paul School of Theology.
Go to Profile#1068
Vladimir R. Legoyda
#37656
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (51 years)
Vladimir Romanovich Legoyda is a Russian public figure, journalist, university professor, expert in cultural studies, political science and religious studies. He is Candidate of Political Sciences and professor of the Department of World literature and culture, Moscow State Institute of International Relations; co-founder, editor-in-chief of Foma magazine, Chairman of the Department for Church's Society and Mass Mediа Relations and Acting Head of the Press Service of the Patriarch of Moscow and all Rus'.
Go to Profile#1069
Philip Yampolsky
#37363
Overall Influence
1920 - 1996 (76 years)
Philip Boas Yampolsky was an eminent translator and scholar of Zen Buddhism and a former Director of the C. V. Starr East Asian Library of Columbia University. A scholar of Chinese and Japanese religious traditions and a specialist in Zen studies, Yampolsky was known for his translations of canonical Zen writings, which were used as textbooks in both graduate and undergraduate Asian studies courses in American universities. His style was regarded as highly analytical.
Go to Profile#1070
Kevin J. Sharpe
#41421
Overall Influence
1950 - 2008 (58 years)
Kevin James Sharpe was a mathematician, theologian, archaeologist, Anglican priest and professor at Union Institute & University. He is known for his publications on the relationship between religion and science, on the interpretation of quantum physics by David Bohm, as well as for his investigations with Leslie Van Gelder on finger flutings in the Rouffignac cave.
Go to Profile#1071
Massimo Faggioli
#36514
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (54 years)
Massimo Faggioli is an Italian academic, Church historian, professor of theology and religious studies at Villanova University, columnist for La Croix International, and contributing writer to Commonweal.
Go to Profile#1072
Zubair Ali Zai
#40593
Overall Influence
1957 - 2013 (56 years)
Zubair Ali Zai was a preacher, theologian, Islamic scholar of ahadith and former merchant marine from Pakistan.His origins was from Pashtun subtribe of Daudzai i.e. Alizai. Life Zubair Alizai was from the Pashtun tribe of Alizai, itself a branch of the larger Durrani confederation tracing their descent back to Ahmad Shah Durrani, founder of the Durrani Empire.
Go to Profile#1073
Alexander Chow
#65211
Overall Influence
Alexander Chow is a Chinese American theologian. He is Senior Lecturer in Theology and World Christianity and co-director of Centre for the Study of World Christianity at New College, University of Edinburgh. His research interests include contextual theology, Christianity in China, Chinese philosophy and religion, public theology, and digital theology.
Go to Profile#1074
Christoph Auffarth
#68092
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Christoph Auffarth is a German religious scholar and theologian. Auffarth is a professor at the Institute of Religious Studies / Education at the University of Bremen with a focus on history and theologies of Christianity.
Go to Profile#1075
Lytta Bassett
#49134
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Lytta Bassett is a Swiss philosopher and Protestant theologian. She is the author of several works that have reached a wide audience, especially her 2002 book Sainte Colère, released in 2007 in English translation as Holy Anger.
Go to Profile#1076
Rami M. Shapiro
#56518
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Rami M. Shapiro , commonly called "Rabbi Rami", is an author, teacher, and speaker on the subjects of liberal Judaism and contemporary spirituality. Early life and education Shapiro was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, and raised in a modern Orthodox Jewish household. Introduced to the study of world religion in high school, he began a serious study and practice of Zen Buddhism at the age of sixteen.
Go to Profile#1077
Richard A. Horsley
#47341
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (85 years)
Richard A. Horsley was the Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts and the Study of Religion at the University of Massachusetts Boston until his retirement in 2007. He described his view of the historical Jesus in these words :
Go to Profile#1078
Chulha Han
#64353
Overall Influence
#1079
Herman Selderhuis
#63257
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Herman Selderhuis is a Dutch minister, theologian and professor of church history and church polity. Life Herman Johan Selderhuis was born on 21 May 1961. He grew up in a family that was not involved in the church. At the age of 15, he began attending church services and was subsequently baptized and joined the Christian Reformed Churches. He attended the grammar school at the Ichthus College in his hometown, Enschede. From 1981 to 1988 he studied theology at the Theological University of Apeldoorn of the Christian Reformed Churches. His doctoral exam was on Church History. Selderhuis was minister of the Christian Reformed Church in Hengelo from 1987 until 1992.
Go to Profile#1080
Graham Schweig
#47149
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Graham M. Schweig is an American scholar of comparative theology of religion, philosophy, and the history of Yoga and Bhakti. He was born in Manhattan, New York and raised in Washington, DC. He joined the faculty at Christopher Newport University in Virginia, in August, 2000, and is currently Professor of Religion and Director of Studies in Religion there. He is also Distinguished Teaching and Research Faculty at The Center for Dharma Studies at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, beginning June, 2017.
Go to Profile#1081
Victor P. Hamilton
#57072
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Victor P. Hamilton is a Canadian / American Old Testament scholar. He was Professor of Old Testament and Theology at Asbury University from 1971 until 2007. His retains the role of professor emeritus of Old Testament at Asbury University.
Go to Profile#1082
Livio Melina
#57482
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Livio Melina is a priest of the Catholic Church and an Italian theologian. Biography Livio Melina was born in Adria in 1952. Since high school, he has been a member of the ecclesial Communion and Liberation movement and was one of its initiators in Veneto.
Go to Profile#1083
Scott J. Jones
#51441
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Scott Jameson Jones is an American bishop of the Global Methodist Church and former bishop of the United Methodist Church, elected in 2004, serving until his retirement and subsequent resignation from the episcopal office and transfer to the GMC in 2023. He was born in Nashville, Tennessee and raised in Illinois, Indiana and Colorado.
Go to Profile#1084
Harry J. Cargas
#44971
Overall Influence
1932 - 1998 (66 years)
Harry James Cargas was an American scholar and author best known for his writing and research on the Holocaust, Jewish–Catholic relations, and American literature. He was a professor at Webster University for nearly three decades, and his circle of friends and collaborators included the American novelist Kurt Vonnegut, Nobel Laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel and sportscaster and humanitarian Bob Costas.
Go to Profile#1085
Józef Tischner
#17043
Overall Influence
1931 - 2000 (69 years)
Józef Stanisław Tischner was a Polish priest and philosopher. The first chaplain of the trade union, "Solidarity" . Life Tischner was born in Stary Sącz to a Góral family and grew up in the village Łopuszna in the south east of Poland. He studied at Jagiellonian University in Kraków. In the 1970s he became an important writer of the opposition movement against the socialist government of the People's Republic of Poland. In 1980s he was considered the semi-official chaplain of the Solidarity movement, and was praised by Pope John Paul II.
Go to Profile#1086
Jawid Mojaddedi
#29758
Overall Influence
Jawid Mojaddedi is an Afghan researcher and professor. Early life Mojaddedi was born in Kabul, Afghanistan. At age five, along with his mother and brother, he moved to Great Britain. During the 1990s, Jawid Mojaddedi attended University of Manchester, where he earned his BA and PhD in Middle Eastern Studies.
Go to Profile#1087
Brent L. Top
#62936
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Brent LaMar Top is a professor of Church History and Doctrine at Brigham Young University . Top served as dean of religious education at BYU and the director of BYU's Religious Studies Center from 2013 to 2018.
Go to Profile#1088
Norman Habel
#54759
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (92 years)
Norman Charles Habel is an Australian Old Testament scholar. His ancestors are Wends from the forests of Prussia. Habel was born near Hamilton, Victoria, and was ordained in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Australia in 1955, serving as pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church in Brooklyn. He taught at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis and the Adelaide College of the Arts and Education, before becoming Principal of Kodaikanal International School in South India. Habel then returned to South Australia, serving as professor at the University of South Australia and then Flinders University.
Go to Profile#1089
Peter Beyerhaus
#77583
Overall Influence
1929 - 2020 (91 years)
Peter Paul Johannes Beyerhaus was a German Protestant pastor, theologian, missionary scholar and academic teacher. As a missionary theologian, he created a German mission theology. On 5 October 2018, by a few scholars like Seung-Goo Lee and Yung-Han Kim the Society of Peter Beyerhaus was founded in his name in South Korea.
Go to Profile#1090
Christian K. Wedemeyer
#57923
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
Christian Konrad Wedemeyer is an American scholar and political and social activist. He is Associate Professor of the History of Religions and Chair of the History of Religions Area at the Divinity School, an associate member of the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations, and Assistant Marshal of the University of Chicago.
Go to Profile#1091
Boris Bobrinskoy
#79360
Overall Influence
1925 - 2020 (95 years)
Boris Bobrinskoy was a French theologian of the Eastern Orthodox Church. Bobrinskoy was honorary dean of the St. Sergius Orthodox Theological Institute in Paris, Rector of the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, a mitrophore, and archpriest of the exarch of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople.
Go to Profile#1092
Lucian Turcescu
#65618
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Lucian Turcescu is a Romanian-born Canadian professor of theology at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Education He emigrated to Canada in 1992, and obtained his Doctor of Philosophy degree in theology from the University of Toronto in 1999. Turcescu taught for six years at St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia, where he became an associate professor and chair of the Religious Studies Department. In 2005, he was recruited as an associate professor in the Department of Theological Studies at Concordia University, where he later was promoted to Full Professor and served ...
Go to Profile#1093
A. T. B. McGowan
#73147
Overall Influence
Andrew Thomson Blake McGowan is a Scottish theologian and pastor. McGowan was the founding principal of Highland Theological College, serving from 1994 to 2009, after which he became minister of the Inverness East Church of Scotland congregation. He chairs the Theological Commission of the World Reformed Fellowship, and is president of the Scottish Evangelical Theology Society.
Go to Profile#1094
Daniela Müller
#61888
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Daniela Müller is a German theologian and church historian. She is a full professor in the History of Christianity and Canon Law at Radboud University, and has published extensively on the subjects of heresy and dissidents. Her work focuses on "the concepts of orthodoxy and heterodoxy and on the history of dissident communities."
Go to Profile#1095
M. Shawn Copeland
#59690
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Mary Shawn Copeland , known professionally as M. Shawn Copeland, is a retired American womanist and Black Catholic theologian, and a former religious sister. She is professor emerita of systematic theology at Boston College and is known for her work in theological anthropology, political theology, and African American Catholicism.
Go to Profile#1096
Robert Orsi
#51310
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Robert Anthony Orsi is a scholar of American history and Catholic studies who is the Grace Craddock Nagle Chair professor at Northwestern University. Biography Orsi was born and raised in the Bronx, New York City. He majored in religion and sociology at Trinity College in Connecticut and graduated salutatorian in 1975, receiving both a Danforth and Watson Scholarship. He attended graduate school in religion at Yale University where his prize-winning dissertation formed the basis of his first book, The Madonna of 115th Street.
Go to Profile#1097
Margaret Farley
#40058
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (89 years)
Margaret A. Farley is an American religious sister and a member of the Catholic Sisters of Mercy. She was Gilbert L. Stark Professor Emerita of Christian Ethics at Yale University Divinity School, where she taught Christian ethics from 1971 to 2007. Farley is the first woman appointed to serve full-time on the Yale School board, along with Henri Nouwen as its first Catholic faculty members. She is a past president of Catholic Theological Society of America.
Go to Profile#1098
Richard Hess
#56755
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Richard Samuel Hess is an American Old Testament scholar. He is Earl S. Kalland Professor of Old Testament and Semitic Languages at Denver Seminary. Hess has degrees from Wheaton College, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, and Hebrew Union College. He previously taught at International Christian College, Glasgow, and the University of Roehampton, London.
Go to Profile#1099
George Stroup
#82390
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
George W. Stroup is J.B. Green Professor Emeritus of Theology at Columbia Theological Seminary. He is a minister in the Presbyterian Church . He is married to Dr. Donna Fox Stroup, a mathematical statistician.
Go to Profile#1100
Max Turner
#81685
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Max Turner is a British New Testament scholar. He is evangelical, and a Baptist minister, although as a young Christian he was associated with the Elim Pentecostal Church. His charismatic roots have generated an interest in the theology of the Holy Spirit, especially in Luke-Acts.
Go to Profile