Search People Result | Academic Influence

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.

Search Influential People

Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Religious Studies,

#2551

Bernard Nsayi

#161063

Overall Influence

1943 - 2021 (78 years)

Bernard Nsayi was the Roman Catholic bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Nkayi, Republic of the Congo. Nsayi was ordained to the priesthood in 1971. He served as bishop of the Diocese of Nkayi from 1990 to 2001. He died in 2021.

#2552

Jutta Burggraf

#184513

Overall Influence

1952 - 2010 (58 years)

Jutta Burggraf was a German Catholic theologian. Burggraf taught at the University of Navarra, where she wrote books and did research. She was a numerary member of Opus Dei.

#2553

Giorgio Otranto

#107503

Overall Influence

1940 - 2023 (83 years)

Giorgio Otranto was an Italian historian, specialized in the history of early Christianity. Life and career Born in Corigliano Calabro, the son of a tailor, Otranto graduated in Classical Literature at the University of Bari.

#2554

Maurus Reinkowski

#191959

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (62 years)

Maurus Reinkowski is a historian of the Ottoman Empire and Professor of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Basel. Works Maurus Reinkowski, Düzenin Şeyleri, Tanzimat'ın Kelimeleri: 19. Yüzyıl Osmanlı Reform Politikasının Karşılaştırmalı Bir Araştırması, Çeviren: Çiğdem Canan Dikmen, İstanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 2017, 351 shf.,

#2555

Gabriel Vanel

#117195

Overall Influence

1925 - 2013 (88 years)

Gabriel Marie Étienne Vanel was the Roman Catholic archbishop of the Archdiocese of Auch, France. Ordained to the priesthood in 1949, Vanel was named bishop in 1970 and resigned in 1996. Notes

#2556

John Sears Tanner

#174122

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

John Sears Tanner is a former president of Brigham Young University-Hawaii . He was the 10th president of BYU-Hawaii, serving from 2015 to 2020. He previously served as first counselor in the General Sunday School Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints , as president of the church's Brazil São Paulo South Mission and as Academic Vice President of Brigham Young University . Tanner is married to Susan W. Tanner, a former general president of the LDS Church's Young Women organization.

#2557

John Barwick

#154381

Overall Influence

John Barwick was an English theologian. Life Barwick took his name from Berwick, where he appears to have been born or brought up. From Berwick he seems to have removed to the Franciscan schools at Oxford, at which university he became a Doctor of Theology, and is enumerated as the twenty-second reader of divinity belonging to that order in the early years of the fourteenth century. He appears to have studied at Paris likewise; for we are told by Dempster and Bale that he also went by the name of Breulanlius; and this Breulanlius is mentioned towards the end of the fifteenth century by the al...

#2558

Jean Margain

#173726

Overall Influence

1931 - 2012 (81 years)

Jean Margain was a French Hebraist. He is known by his Semitic and Samaritan studies. Life Education Margain got his Doctor of Arts in 1988 with his thesis Les particules dans le Targum samaritain de Genèse-Exode: jalons pour une histoire de l'araméen samaritain at Université Paris III.

#2559

Sissel Undheim

#191232

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (50 years)

Sissel Undheim is Professor of Religion at the University of Bergen. She is an expert on gender and sexuality in the late Roman period, New Age religion, and the didactics of religion. Education Undheim received her PhD from the University of Bergen in 2011. Her doctoral thesis was entitled Sanctae virginitates: Sacred and Consecrated Virginities in Late Roman Antiquity.

#2560

Eduard Nielsen

#192235

Overall Influence

1923 - 2017 (94 years)

Eduard Mikael V. Nielsen was a Danish theologian. He was a professor at the University of Copenhagen from 1956 to 1991. He was a fellow of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters from 1987.

#2561

Dino Abazović

#170488

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (52 years)

Dino Abazović is a sociologist and Full Professor at the University of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Biography He studied sociology at the Faculty of Political Science in Sarajevo where he graduated in 1999. He earned his post-graduate degree from the same institution in 2005 with a thesis on the sociological determination of religious nationalism. In 2009 he earned his PhD with a thesis on the subject of Bosnian Muslims between secularization and desecularization. In 2012 he was named Centennial Professor and head of the Center for Interdisciplinary Postgraduate Studies at the Faculty of...

#2562

John Meehan

#177659

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (57 years)

John Meehan SJ is a Canadian Jesuit priest, historian and academic. He is Director of the Bill Graham Centre for Contemporary International History at Trinity College, University of Toronto. He was president and vice-chancellor of the University of Sudbury in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada from September 2019 until 2021. He was formerly rector of the Church of the Gesù in Montreal and president of Campion College in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada.

#2563

Anne van der Meiden

#160920

Overall Influence

1929 - 2021 (92 years)

Anne van der Meiden was a Dutch theologian, translator, and professor at Utrecht University. He translated the bible into Tweants dialect.

#2564

Ardeth G. Kapp

#79099

Overall Influence

1931 - Present (93 years)

Ardeth Greene Kapp was the ninth Young Women general president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 1984 to 1992. Early life Ardeth Greene was born on March 19, 1931, in Cardston, Alberta, to Edwin Kent Greene and Julia Leavitt Greene. Shortly after her birth her family moved to Glenwood, Alberta. She was baptized into the LDS Church on April 4,1939 in the Cardston Temple. In 1947, she underwent life-threatening surgery due to an ear infection.

#2565

Edvard Kovač

#129680

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Fr. Edvard Kovač is a Slovenian theologian, philosopher and author. He is a member of the Order of Friars Minor and professor at the University of Ljubljana Theological Faculty and the Catholic University of Toulouse.

#2566

Daniel Smokler

#145251

Overall Influence

Rabbi Daniel Smokler is the Chief Innovation Officer of Hillel International . He received a B.A. in History of Art Cum Laude with distinction from Yale University, where he received the Walter Louis Erich Memorial Prize as the outstanding student in the History of Art. In 1997, Smokler founded Jews in the Woods, a multi-denominational gathering of college students for learning, prayer and reflection on social issues. He spent several years after college working as a union organizer. Smokler received his rabbinic ordination from Rabbis Zalman Nechemia Goldberg and Yaakov Moshe Poupko in 2006....

#2567

Barhadbshabba of Hulwan

#188398

Overall Influence

Barḥadbshabba of Ḥulwān was a 7th-century theologian and Christian bishop of the Church of the East who wrote many religious works and a history of the School of Nisibis which is of historical interest.

#2568

Niels Jørgen Cappelørn

#130505

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Niels Jørgen Cappelørn is a Danish theologian, Søren Kierkegaard scholar and former director of Søren Kierkegaard Research Center at the University of Copenhagen. He has written and edited a number of books on Kierkegaard, and was editor of Index til Søren Kierkegaards Papirer, bind XIV-XVI . He was Director of the Danish Bible Society from 1980 to 1993.

#2569

Richard of Campsall

#191317

Overall Influence

Richard of Campsall was an English theologian and scholastic philosopher, at the University of Oxford. He was a Fellow of Balliol College and then of Merton College. He is now considered a possible precursor to the views usually associated with William of Ockham.

#2570

G. Ernest Wright

1909 - 1974 (65 years)

George Ernest Wright , was a leading Old Testament scholar and biblical archaeologist. An expert in Ancient Near Eastern archaeology, he was especially known for his work in the study and dating of pottery. He was associated with the biblical theology movement.

#2571

Ferdinand Cavallera

1875 - 1954 (79 years)

Ferdinand Cavallera was born in Puy-en-Velay, France, of parents of Piedmontese origin. He joined the Society of Jesus in 1892 and became a biblical scholar, textual critic, and publisher on patristics.

#2572

Leonard Feeney

1897 - 1978 (81 years)

Leonard Edward Feeney was an American Jesuit Catholic priest, poet, lyricist, and essayist. He articulated an interpretation of the Roman Catholic doctrine extra Ecclesiam nulla salus . He took the position that baptism of blood and baptism of desire are unavailing and that therefore no non-Catholics will be saved. Those positions are called, after him, Feeneyism.

#2573

Charles George Herbermann

1840 - 1916 (76 years)

Charles George Herbermann was a German-American professor and historian. Biography Charles George Herbermann was born in Saerbeck near Münster, Westphalia, Prussia on 8 December 1840, the son of George Herbermann and Elizabeth Stipp. He arrived in the United States in 1851, and seven years later graduated at College of St. Francis Xavier, New York City. He was appointed professor of Latin language and Literature and librarian at the College of the City of New York. For more than 50 years, he was immersed amidst various issues involved with Catholicism. He was president of the Catholic Club and of the United States Catholic Historical Society .

#2574

Charles R. Erdman Sr.

1866 - 1960 (94 years)

Charles Rosenbury Erdman Sr. was an American Presbyterian minister and professor of theology at Princeton Theological Seminary. Early life and education Erdman was born on July 20, 1866, in Fayetteville, New York, to William J. Erdman, a leader in the premillennialist and holiness movements of the late nineteenth century. He earned his B.A. from the College of New Jersey and went on to study at Princeton Theological Seminary from 1887 to 1891. Erdman was ordained on May 8, 1891, in the Presbytery of Philadelphia North, PCUSA.

#2575

J. Rendel Harris

1852 - 1941 (89 years)

James Rendel Harris was an English biblical scholar and curator of manuscripts, who was instrumental in bringing back to light many Syriac Scriptures and other early documents. His contacts at the Saint Catherine's Monastery on Mount Sinai in Egypt enabled twin sisters Agnes Smith Lewis and Margaret Dunlop Gibson to discover there the Sinaitic Palimpsest, the oldest Syriac New Testament document in existence. He subsequently accompanied them on a second trip, with Robert Bensly and Francis Crawford Burkitt, to decipher the palimpsest. He himself discovered there other manuscripts . Harris's Biblical Fragments from Mount Sinai appeared in 1890.

#2576

Clement Rogers

1866 - 1949 (83 years)

Clement Francis Rogers was an English theologian, who was professor of pastoral theology at King's College London. Rogers, the son of Professor James Rogers, was born in 1866 and educated at Westminster School and Jesus College, Oxford. He was ordained deacon in 1890 and priest in 1891, and became a lecturer at King's College London in 1906 having spent time working in parishes in Yorkshire and London. He became a professor in 1919, retiring in 1932 and becoming an emeritus professor. He served as Chaplain of King's College London from 1932-1936. His works included books based on his experi...

#2577

Clarence Skinner

1881 - 1949 (68 years)

Clarence Russell Skinner was a Universalist minister, teacher, and dean of the Crane School of Theology at Tufts University. Born on March 23, 1881, in Brooklyn, New York, he graduated from St. Lawrence University in 1904 with a BA and was ordained in 1906. He served as minister at the Universalist Church in Mont Vernon, New York from 1906 to 1911, Grace Universalist Church in Lowell, Massachusetts, from 1911 to 1914, and the First Universalist Church of Medford, Massachusetts, from 1917 to 1920. Clarence Skinner was on faculty at Crane Theological School, Tufts University as Professor of Applied Christianity from 1914 to 1933, and served as dean from 1933 to 1945.

#2578

Francis Jeremiah Connell

1888 - 1967 (79 years)

Francis Jeremiah Connell, C.Ss.R. , was a Redemptorist priest, professor, author, and noted Catholic American theologian. He was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and died in Washington, D.C. Early life Born to Timothy and Mary , Francis attended the Boston public school system from 1893 to 1901. From 1901 to 1905, he attended Boston Latin School.

#2579

Gustav Hölscher

1877 - 1955 (78 years)

Gustav Hölscher was a German Evangelical-Lutheran theologian and a professor of Old Testament Studies. Biography Gustav Diedrich Hillard Hölscher was born in Norden, on Germany's North Sea coast and close to the Dutch frontier. Both his parents came from local families and had grown up in the town, but his own childhood was more itinerant. Wilhelm Hölscher, his father, was a Lutheran pastor and also a considerable theological theologian. In 1880, while Gustav was still very small, Wilhelm Hölscher accepted a job as director of studies at Loccum Abbey, which meant the family relocating to the far side of Bremen.

#2580

Henrik Samuel Nyberg

Henrik Samuel Nyberg

1889 - 1974 (85 years)

Henrik Samuel Nyberg was a Swedish scholar of broad interest and a well known expert of Iranology and Arab studies. Life Nyberg was born in Söderbärke in Southern Dalecarlia on 28 December 1889. When he was 19, he moved to Uppsala to undertake university courses. There, he studied from Classical languages to Sanskrit and to the Semitic idioms. Nyberg set up the Middle Persian curriculum as a possible subject of study at the University of Uppsala and he felt the need for teaching it by meeting Western scholarly standards. Nyberg’s single most important contribution to the study of Iranian religions is his Irans forntida religioner .

#2581

Günther Jacoby

1881 - 1969 (88 years)

Friedrich Günther Jacoby was a German theologian and philosopher. Life Born in Königsberg, Jacoby studied Protestant theology there from 1900 to 1903. He acquired the licentiate degree with a text interpretation of the Biblical book of Jeremiah. After the state examination for the higher school service in religion, Hebrew and German, which he passed in 1904, he studied philosophy in East Prussia and Berlin while working as an assistant teacher and received his doctorate in 1906 under Friedrich Paulsen with the work Herders "Kalligone" und ihre Verhältnis zu Kants "Kritik der Urteilskraft". Tw...

#2582

Nikos Nissiotis

1924 - 1986 (62 years)

Nikolaos "Nikos" A. Nissiotis was a Greek theologian, philosopher, university professor, and basketball coach. Basketball coaching career Nissiotis is largely credited with developing the sport of basketball in Greece. He was the head coach of the Greek League club Panellinios Athens, during its famous "Golden Five", or "Fabulous Five" era, during the 1950s decade. With Panellinios, he won 3 Greek League championships, in the years 1953, 1955, and 1957. He also won two European-wide International Club Tournament Championships with the club, as he won the 1955 Brussels Basketball Tournament and the 1956 San Remo Basketball Tournament.

#2583

François Charrière

1893 - 1976 (83 years)

François Charrière was the Roman Catholic bishop of Lausanne, Geneva and Fribourg from 1945 to 1970. Biography François Charrière was born into a peasant family in the village of Cerniat on 1 September 1893. He studied at the Collège Saint-Michel in Fribourg and then under the Capuchins at the Collège de Stans, earning his baccalaureate in 1913. He spent the next four years at the major seminary of the diocese and was ordained a priest on 15 July 1917. His first pastoral assignment was at the parish of Notre Dame in Lausanne for three years. He then renewed his studies at the Angelicum, earning his doctorate in canon law in 1923 with a thesis titled "De interdicto".

#2584

Josef Hromádka

1889 - 1969 (80 years)

Josef Lukl Hromádka was a Czech Protestant theologian. He was a founder of the Christian Peace Conference. Born into a Lutheran peasant family in a village in Moravia in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Hromádka studied theology in Vienna, Basel and Heidelberg, as well as in Aberdeen. He was a supporter of and member from its foundation in 1918 of the unified Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren.

#2585

Gordon Clark

1902 - 1985 (83 years)

Gordon Haddon Clark was an American philosopher and Calvinist theologian. He was a leading figure associated with presuppositional apologetics and was chairman of the Philosophy Department at Butler University for 28 years. He was an expert in pre-Socratic and ancient philosophy and was noted for defending the idea of propositional revelation against empiricism and rationalism, in arguing that all truth is propositional. His theory of knowledge is sometimes called scripturalism.

#2586

Wilhelm Jannasch

1888 - 1966 (78 years)

Wilhelm Jannasch was a German Protestant theologian and clergyman. He studied theology at the universities of Marburg, Bonn, Berlin and Heidelberg. In 1913 he was ordained as a minister in Weimar, and during the following year received his licentiate at Heidelberg. In 1921 he was named senior pastor at St. Giles Church in Lübeck. In 1934 he was forced into early retirement by the Nazi government, and he subsequently became an active member of the Confessing Church. From 1939 onwards, he served as a pastor of the Confessing congregation in Berlin-Friedenau. From 1946 to 1956 he was a professor...

#2587

Joseph Campbell

Joseph Campbell

1904 - 1987 (83 years)

Joseph John Campbell was an American writer. He was a professor of literature at Sarah Lawrence College who worked in comparative mythology and comparative religion. His work covers many aspects of the human experience. Campbell's best-known work is his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces , in which he discusses his theory of the journey of the archetypal hero shared by world mythologies, termed the monomyth.

#2588

Charles Coulson

1910 - 1974 (64 years)

Charles Alfred Coulson was a British applied mathematician and theoretical chemist. Coulson's major scientific work was as a pioneer of the application of the quantum theory of valency to problems of molecular structure, dynamics and reactivity. He was also a Methodist lay preacher, served on the World Council of Churches from 1962 to 1968, and was chairman of Oxfam from 1965 to 1971.

#2589

Arthur Maheux

1884 - 1967 (83 years)

Monsignor Joseph Thomas Arthur Maheux, SM, OBE, FRSC was a Canadian priest and historian. He was a leading proponent of Canadian unity as well as a trenchant critic of Quebec society. He was president of the Société du parler français au Canada from 1924 to 1925 and president of the Canadian Historical Association from 1948 to 1949.

#2590

Charles Journet

1891 - 1975 (84 years)

Charles Journet was a Swiss Roman Catholic theologian. He was the first Swiss named a cardinal. Journet has been considered a figure of holiness and a candidate for canonisation; he has been accorded the title servant of God.

#2591

Arthur Võõbus

1909 - 1988 (79 years)

Arthur Vööbus was an Estonian theologian, orientalist, scholar, author, professor, and church historian. Biography Arthur Vööbus was born in Matjama village, Tartu County, Livonia, Russian Empire as the son of a teacher. In 1928, he completed his schooling at the Hugo Treffner Gymnasium in Tartu, then in 1932 his studies at the Theological Faculty of the University of Tartu. That same year he was ordained a priest. From 1933 to 1940 he was a pastor in the Estonian Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tartu. Arthur Vööbus graduated as master of theology in 1934 with a thesis on "The true Christian, ...

#2592

Hugo Enomiya-Lassalle

Hugo Enomiya-Lassalle

1898 - 1990 (92 years)

Hugo Makibi Enomiya-Lassalle was a German Jesuit priest and one of the foremost teachers to embrace both Roman Catholic Christianity and Zen Buddhism. Biography Hugo Lassalle passed his school days from 1911 to 1916 at the Gymnasium Petrinum in Brilon in 1917. Because of an injury in the First World War, Hugo Lassalle was admitted to the military hospital of Brilon in 1917. Enomiya-Lassalle joined the Society of Jesus on 25 April 1919. At the end of the usual Jesuit spiritual and academic training he was ordained priest on 28 August 1927.

#2593

Friedrich Gogarten

1887 - 1967 (80 years)

Friedrich Gogarten was a Lutheran theologian, co-founder of dialectical theology in Germany in the early 20th century. Career Under the leadership of Karl Barth, Gogarten split from the prevailing liberal theology as represented by Albrecht Ritschl and others. He stood against the historicism and anthropocentrism of the Protestant theology of the 19th century by emphasizing the absolute antithesis of God and man. This new dialectical theology was named after a phrase in Gogarten's magazine Between the Ages.

#2594

Adolf Köberle

1898 - 1990 (92 years)

Adolf Köberle was a German theologian. From 1922 to 1926, he was head of the Evangelical Lutheran Mission Seminary in Leipzig. From 1930 to 1939, he was Professor of Systematic Theology in Basel. He is best known for his work, The Quest for Holiness: A Biblical, Historical, and Systematic Investigation.

#2595

Richard Knowling

1851 - 1919 (68 years)

Canon Richard Knowling, DD was the Chaplain of King's College London, canon of Durham and professor of divinity at Durham University. Early life Richard John Knowling was born in Devonport, England and educated at Blundell's School in Tiverton and at Balliol College in Oxford. After taking Honours in Lit.Hum and theology, he was appointed classical master at Abingdon School in 1874. In 1875 Knowling was ordained deacon and from 1878 to 1879 served as curate of Wellington in Somerset, where his father, Prebendary Knowling, was vicar.

#2596

David Capell Simpson

1883 - 1955 (72 years)

David Capell Simpson , known as D. C. Simpson, was a British biblical scholar, academic and Church of England clergyman. He was Oriel Professor of the Interpretation of Holy Scripture at the University of Oxford from 1925 to 1950.

#2597

Oskar Holtzmann

1859 - 1934 (75 years)

Oskar Holtzmann was a German theologian who specialized in New Testament studies. From 1877 to 1883 he studied theology at the universities of Strasbourg, Göttingen and Giessen and at the seminary in Friedberg. Afterwards, he served as a pastor in Bickenbach and as a teacher at a number of different schools. In 1889 he became a lecturer at the University of Giessen, where during the following year, he was appointed an associate professor of New Testament exegesis.

#2598

Ole Hallesby

1879 - 1961 (82 years)

Ole Kristian Hallesby was a conservative, Norwegian Lutheran theologian, author and educator. Biography Ole Kristian Hallesby was born in Aremark, in Østfold, Norway. Hallesby grew up as the sixth of eight siblings on a family farm with a father also served as an assistant pastor. His family was from the Lutheran piety of the Haugean heritage. He graduated with a degree in theology in 1903 and was awarded his doctorate in 1909.

#2599

Charles E. Sheedy

1912 - 1990 (78 years)

Charles E. Sheedy, C.S.C. was an American priest and theologian of the Congregation of Holy Cross and an administrator at the University of Notre Dame. Youth and training Fr. Sheedy was born on July 1, 1912, to Patrick and Estelle Sheedy in Pittsburgh, PA. The fifth of six children, his birth was preceded by siblings Morgan, Donald, John, and Leo, and followed by Herman. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Notre Dame in 1933, a Bachelor of Laws degree from the University of Pittsburgh in 1936, and a Licentiate of Sacred Theology in 1945 and a Doctor of Sacred Theology from the Catholic...

#2600

Abram S. Isaacs

1851 - 1920 (69 years)

Abram S. Isaacs was an American rabbi, author, and professor. Isaacs received his education at the New York University, from which he was graduated in 1871. He became a Rabbi at Barnett Memorial Temple at Paterson, New Jersey. For thirty-five years he occupied a chair at the New York University, first as Professor of Hebrew, then of Germanic languages, and later of Semitics. Starting in 1878, he edited The Jewish Messenger, a weekly publication devoted to Jewish communal affairs. It became merged in The American Hebrew in 1903, at which time Isaacs withdrew from editorial work. He was also a frequent contributor to periodicals, writing on Judaism and Jewish issues.

« Previous Next »

Image Attributions