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,
#2701
Charles Spurgeon
1834 - 1892 (58 years)
Charles Haddon Spurgeon was an English Particular Baptist preacher. Spurgeon remains highly influential among Christians of various denominations, to some of whom he is known as the "Prince of Preachers". He was a strong figure in the Reformed Baptist tradition, defending the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, and opposing the liberal and pragmatic theological tendencies in the Church of his day.
Go to Profile#2702
Marie-Joseph Lagrange
1855 - 1938 (83 years)
Marie-Joseph Lagrange was a Catholic priest in the Dominican Order, theologian and founder of the École Biblique in Jerusalem. Life Albert Marie-Henri Lagrange was born 7 March 1855, in Bourg-en-Bresse, France. At the age of three, he received a blessing from the Curé d’Ars. At the junior Seminary of Autun, he studied languages: Greek, German, English, and Italian. He studied law at Paris, obtaining a Doctorate in 1878; and he was admitted to practice.
Go to Profile#2703
Mirza Ghulam Ahmad
1835 - 1908 (73 years)
Mirzā Ghulām Aḥmad was an Indian religious leader and the founder of the Ahmadiyya movement in Islam. He claimed to have been divinely appointed as the promised Messiah and Mahdī—which is the metaphorical second-coming of Jesus , in fulfillment of the Islamic prophecies regarding the end times, as well as the Mujaddid of the 14th Islamic century.
Go to Profile#2704
William of Ockham
William of Ockham, OFM was an English Franciscan friar, scholastic philosopher, apologist, and Catholic theologian, who is believed to have been born in Ockham, a small village in Surrey. He is considered to be one of the major figures of medieval thought and was at the centre of the major intellectual and political controversies of the 14th century. He is commonly known for Occam's razor, the methodological principle that bears his name, and also produced significant works on logic, physics and theology. William is remembered in the Church of England with a commemoration on the 10th of April...
Go to Profile#2705
Saint Dominic
1170 - 1221 (51 years)
Saint Dominic, , also known as Dominic de Guzmán , was a Castilian Catholic priest and the founder of the Dominican Order. He is the patron saint of astronomers and natural scientists. He is alternatively called Dominic of Osma, Dominic of Caleruega, and Domingo Félix de Guzmán.
Go to Profile#2706
John Wycliffe
1320 - 1384 (64 years)
John Wycliffe was an English scholastic philosopher, theologian, biblical translator, reformer, Catholic priest, and a seminary professor at the University of Oxford. He became an influential dissident within the Catholic priesthood during the 14th century and is considered an important predecessor to Protestantism. Wycliffe questioned the privileged status of the clergy, who had bolstered their powerful role in England, and advocated radical poverty of the clergy.
Go to Profile#2707
Alphonsus Liguori
1696 - 1787 (91 years)
Alphonsus Liguori, CSsR , sometimes called Alphonsus Maria de Liguori or Saint Alphonsus Liguori, was an Italian Catholic bishop, spiritual writer, composer, musician, artist, poet, lawyer, scholastic philosopher, and theologian. He founded the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer, known as the Redemptorists, in November 1732.
Go to Profile#2708
Sidney Rigdon
1793 - 1876 (83 years)
Sidney Rigdon was a leader during the early history of the Latter Day Saint movement. Biography Early life Rigdon was born in St. Clair Township, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, on February 19, 1793. He was the youngest of four children of William and Nancy Rigdon. Rigdon's father was a farmer and a native of Harford County, Maryland. He died in 1810.
Go to Profile#2709
John of the Cross
1542 - 1591 (49 years)
John of the Cross, OCD was a Spanish Catholic priest, mystic, and a Carmelite friar of converso origin. He is a major figure of the Counter-Reformation in Spain, and he is one of the thirty-seven Doctors of the Church.
Go to Profile#2710
Tatian
120 - 180 (60 years)
Tatian of Adiabene, or Tatian the Syrian or Tatian the Assyrian, was an Assyrian Christian writer and theologian of the 2nd century. Tatian's most influential work is the Diatessaron, a Biblical paraphrase, or "harmony", of the four gospels that became the standard text of the four gospels in the Syriac-speaking churches until the 5th-century, after which it gave way to the four separate gospels in the Peshitta version.
Go to Profile#2711
John Knox
1514 - 1572 (58 years)
John Knox was a Scottish minister, Reformed theologian, and writer who was a leader of the country's Reformation. He was the founder of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. Born in Giffordgate, a street in Haddington, East Lothian, Knox is believed to have been educated at the University of St Andrews and worked as a notary-priest. Influenced by early church reformers such as George Wishart, he joined the movement to reform the Scottish church. He was caught up in the and political events that involved the murder of Cardinal David Beaton in 1546 and the intervention of the regent Mary of Guise.
Go to Profile#2712
Jan Hus
1369 - 1415 (46 years)
Jan Hus , sometimes anglicized as John Hus or John Huss, and referred to in historical texts as Iohannes Hus or Johannes Huss, was a Czech theologian and philosopher who became a Church reformer and the inspiration of Hussitism, a key predecessor to Protestantism, and a seminal figure in the Bohemian Reformation. Hus is considered to be the first Church reformer, even though some designate the theorist John Wycliffe. His teachings had a strong influence, most immediately in the approval of a reformed Bohemian religious denomination and, over a century later, on Martin Luther.
Go to Profile#2713
Abu Hanifa
699 - 767 (68 years)
Nuʿmān ibn Thābit ibn Zūṭā ibn Marzubān , commonly known by his kunya Abū Ḥanīfa , or reverently as Imam Abū Ḥanīfa by Sunni Muslims, was a Sunni Muslim theologian and jurist who became the eponymous founder of the Hanafi school of Sunni jurisprudence, which has remained the most widely practised school of law in the Sunni tradition. The school of thought predominates in Central Asia, Afghanistan, Iran , Turkey, the Balkans, Russia, Circassia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Muslims in India, and some parts of the Arab world. He is also widely called al-Imām al-Aʿẓam and Sirāj al-Aʾimma by Sunni Musl...
Go to Profile#2714
Saint Patrick
385 - 461 (76 years)
Saint Patrick was a fifth-century Romano-British Christian missionary and bishop in Ireland. Known as the "Apostle of Ireland", he is the primary patron saint of Ireland, the other patron saints being Brigid of Kildare and Columba. Patrick was never formally canonised, having lived before the current laws of the Catholic Church in these matters. Nevertheless, he is venerated as a saint in the Catholic Church, the Lutheran Church, the Church of Ireland , and in the Eastern Orthodox Church, where he is regarded as equal-to-the-apostles and Enlightener of Ireland.
Go to Profile#2715
Augustine of Canterbury
534 - 605 (71 years)
Augustine of Canterbury was a Christian monk who became the first archbishop of Canterbury in the year 597. He is considered the "Apostle to the English" and a founding figure of the Church of England.
Go to Profile#2716
R. A. Torrey
1856 - 1928 (72 years)
Reuben Archer Torrey was an American evangelist, pastor, educator, and writer. He aligned with Keswick theology. Biography Torrey was born in Hoboken, New Jersey, the son of a banker. He graduated from Yale University in 1875 and from Yale Divinity School in 1878, following which he became a Congregational minister in Garrettsville, Ohio. In 1879, he married Clara Smith, and they subsequently had five children.
Go to Profile#2717
Charles Hodge
1797 - 1878 (81 years)
Charles Hodge was a Reformed Presbyterian theologian and principal of Princeton Theological Seminary between 1851 and 1878. He was a leading exponent of the Princeton Theology, an orthodox Calvinist theological tradition in America during the 19th century. He argued strongly for the authority of the Bible as the Word of God. Many of his ideas were adopted in the 20th century by Fundamentalists and Evangelicals.
Go to Profile#2718
Alfred Loisy
1857 - 1940 (83 years)
Alfred Firmin Loisy was a French Roman Catholic priest, professor and theologian generally credited as a founder of modernism in the Roman Catholic Church. He was a critic of traditional views of the interpretation of the Bible, and argued that biblical criticism could be helpful for a theological interpretation of the Bible.
Go to Profile#2719
Martin Niemöller
1892 - 1984 (92 years)
Friedrich Gustav Emil Martin Niemöller was a German theologian and Lutheran pastor. He is best known for his opposition to the Nazi regime during the late 1930s and for his widely quoted 1946 poem "First they came ...". The poem exists in many versions; the one featured on the United States Holocaust Memorial reads: "First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out – because I was not a Jew. Then ...
Go to Profile#2720
Philip Schaff
1819 - 1893 (74 years)
Philip Schaff was a Swiss-born, German-educated Protestant theologian and ecclesiastical historian, who spent most of his adult life living and teaching in the United States. Life and career Schaff was born in Chur, Switzerland, and educated at the gymnasium of Stuttgart. At the universities of Tübingen, Halle and Berlin, he was successively influenced by Ferdinand Christian Baur and Schmid, by Friedrich August Tholuck and Julius Müller, by David Strauss and, above all, Johann August Wilhelm Neander. At Berlin in 1841 he took the degree of Bachelor of Divinity and passed examinations for a professorship.
Go to Profile#2721
Rabbi Akiva
50 - 135 (85 years)
Akiva ben Joseph , also known as Rabbi Akiva , was a leading Jewish scholar and sage, a tanna of the latter part of the first century and the beginning of the second century. Rabbi Akiva was a leading contributor to the Mishnah and to Midrash halakha. He is referred to in the Talmud as Rosh la-Hakhamim "Chief of the Sages". He was executed by the Romans in the aftermath of the Bar Kokhba revolt.
Go to Profile#2722
Franz Overbeck
1837 - 1905 (68 years)
Franz Camille Overbeck was a German Protestant theologian. In Anglo-American discourse, he is perhaps best known in regard to his friendship with Friedrich Nietzsche; in German theological circles, Overbeck remains discussed for his own contributions.
Go to Profile#2723
Theodoret
393 - 457 (64 years)
Theodoret of Cyrus or Cyrrhus was an influential theologian of the School of Antioch, biblical commentator, and Christian bishop of Cyrrhus . He played a pivotal role in several 5th-century Byzantine Church controversies that led to various ecumenical acts and schisms. He wrote against Cyril of Alexandria's 12 Anathemas which were sent to Nestorius and did not personally condemn Nestorius until the Council of Chalcedon. His writings against Cyril were included in the Three Chapters Controversy and were condemned at the Second Council of Constantinople. Some Chalcedonian and East Syriac Christ...
Go to Profile#2724
John Cassian
360 - 435 (75 years)
John Cassian, also known as John the Ascetic and John Cassian the Roman , was a Christian monk and theologian celebrated in both the Western and Eastern churches for his mystical writings. Cassian is noted for his role in bringing the ideas and practices of early Christian monasticism to the medieval West.
Go to Profile#2725
Nathan Söderblom
1866 - 1931 (65 years)
Lars Olof Jonathan Söderblom was a Swedish clergyman. He was the Church of Sweden Archbishop of Uppsala between 1914 and 1931, and recipient of the 1930 Nobel Peace Prize. He is commemorated in the Calendar of Saints of the Lutheran Church on 12 July.
Go to Profile#2726
5th Dalai Lama
1617 - 1682 (65 years)
Ngawang Lobsang Gyatso was the 5th Dalai Lama and the first Dalai Lama to wield effective temporal and spiritual power over all Tibet. He is often referred to simply as the Great Fifth, being a key religious and temporal leader of Tibetan Buddhism and Tibet. Gyatso is credited with unifying all Tibet under the Ganden Phodrang after a Mongol military intervention which ended a protracted era of civil wars. As an independent head of state, he established relations with the Qing empire and other regional countries and also met early European explorers. Gyatso also wrote 24 volumes' worth of scho...
Go to Profile#2727
Theodore of Mopsuestia
350 - 428 (78 years)
Theodore of Mopsuestia was a Christian theologian, and Bishop of Mopsuestia from 392 to 428 AD. He is also known as Theodore of Antioch, from the place of his birth and presbyterate. He is the best known representative of the middle Antioch School of hermeneutics.
Go to Profile#2728
Paul de Lagarde
1827 - 1891 (64 years)
Paul Anton de Lagarde was a German biblical scholar and orientalist, sometimes regarded as one of the greatest orientalists of the 19th century. Lagarde's strong support of anti-Semitism, vocal opposition to Christianity, Social Darwinism and anti-Slavism are viewed as having been among the most influential in supporting the ideology of Nazism.
Go to Profile#2729
Moses Mendelssohn
1729 - 1786 (57 years)
Moses Mendelssohn was a German-Jewish philosopher and theologian. His writings and ideas on Jews and the Jewish religion and identity were a central element in the development of the Haskalah, or 'Jewish Enlightenment' of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Born to a poor Jewish family in Dessau, Principality of Anhalt, and originally destined for a rabbinical career, Mendelssohn educated himself in German thought and literature. Through his writings on philosophy and religion he came to be regarded as a leading cultural figure of his time by both Christian and Jewish inhabitants of German-speaking Europe and beyond.
Go to Profile#2730
Aphrahat
270 - 346 (76 years)
Aphrahat , venerated as Saint Aphrahat the Persian, was a third-century Syriac Christian author of Iranian descent from the Sasanian Empire, who composed a series of twenty-three expositions or homilies on points of Christian doctrine and practice. All his known works, the Demonstrations, come from later on in his life. He was an ascetic and celibate, and was almost definitely a son of the covenant . He may have been a bishop, and later Syriac tradition places him at the head of Mar Mattai Monastery near Mosul in what is now northern Iraq. He was a near contemporary to the slightly younger Ephrem the Syrian, but the latter lived within the sphere of the Roman Empire.
Go to Profile#2731
Hildegard of Bingen
1098 - 1179 (81 years)
Hildegard of Bingen , also known as Saint Hildegard and the Sibyl of the Rhine, was a German Benedictine abbess and polymath active as a writer, composer, philosopher, mystic, visionary, and as a medical writer and practitioner during the High Middle Ages. She is one of the best-known composers of sacred monophony, as well as the most recorded in modern history. She has been considered by scholars to be the founder of scientific natural history in Germany.
Go to Profile#2732
Thomas Cranmer
1489 - 1556 (67 years)
Thomas Cranmer was a leader of the English Reformation and Archbishop of Canterbury during the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI and, for a short time, Mary I. He helped build the case for the annulment of Henry's marriage to Catherine of Aragon, which was one of the causes of the separation of the English Church from union with the Holy See. Along with Thomas Cromwell, he supported the principle of royal supremacy, in which the king was considered sovereign over the Church within his realm.
Go to Profile#2733
Sergei Bulgakov
1871 - 1944 (73 years)
Sergei Nikolayevich Bulgakov was a Russian Orthodox theologian, priest, philosopher, and economist. Orthodox writer and scholar David Bentley Hart has said that Bulgakov was "the greatest systematic theologian of the twentieth century." Father Sergei Bulgakov also served as a spiritual father and confessor to Mother Maria Skobtsova .
Go to Profile#2734
William F. Albright
1891 - 1971 (80 years)
William Foxwell Albright was an American archaeologist, biblical scholar, philologist, and expert on ceramics. He is considered "one of the twentieth century's most influential American biblical scholars", having become known to the public in 1948 for his role in the authentication of the Dead Sea Scrolls. His scholarly reputation arose as a leading theorist and practitioner of biblical archaeology.
Go to Profile#2735
Abraham ibn Ezra
1089 - 1167 (78 years)
Abraham ben Meir Ibn Ezra was one of the most distinguished Jewish biblical commentators and philosophers of the Middle Ages. He was born in Tudela, Taifa of Zaragoza . Biography Abraham Ibn Ezra was born in Tudela, one of the oldest and most important Jewish communities in Navarre. At the time, the town was under the rule of the emirs of the Muslim Taifa of Zaragoza. However, when he later moved to Córdoba, he claimed it to be his place of birth. Ultimately, most scholars agree that his place of birth was Tudela.
Go to Profile#2736
Lewis Sperry Chafer
1871 - 1952 (81 years)
Lewis Sperry Chafer was an American theologian. He co-founded Dallas Theological Seminary with his older brother Rollin Thomas Chafer , served as its first president, and was an influential proponent of Christian Dispensationalism in the early 20th century. John Hannah described Chafer as a visionary Bible teacher, a minister of the gospel, a man of prayer with strong piety. One of his students, Charles Caldwell Ryrie, who went on to become a world renowned theologian and scholar, stated that Chafer was an evangelist who was also "an eminent theologian."
Go to Profile#2737
Dwight L. Moody
1837 - 1899 (62 years)
Dwight Lyman Moody , also known as D. L. Moody, was an American evangelist and publisher connected with Keswickianism, who founded the Moody Church, Northfield School and Mount Hermon School in Massachusetts , Moody Bible Institute, and Moody Publishers. One of his most famous quotes was "Faith makes all things possible... Love makes all things easy." Moody gave up his lucrative boot and shoe business to devote his life to revivalism, working first in the Civil War with Union troops through YMCA in the United States Christian Commission. In Chicago, he built one of the major evangelical centers in the nation, which is still active.
Go to Profile#2738
Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab
1704 - 1792 (88 years)
Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab ibn Sulayman al-Tamimi was a Sunni Muslim scholar, theologian, preacher, activist, religious leader, jurist, and reformer from Najd in central Arabia, considered as the eponymous founder of the so-called Wahhabi movement. His prominent students included his sons Ḥusayn, Abdullāh, ʿAlī, and Ibrāhīm, his grandson ʿAbdur-Raḥman ibn Ḥasan, his son-in-law ʿAbdul-ʿAzīz ibn Muḥammad ibn Saʿūd, Ḥamād ibn Nāṣir ibn Muʿammar, and Ḥusayn āl-Ghannām.
Go to Profile#2739
Luke the Evangelist
Luke the Evangelist is one of the Four Evangelists—the four traditionally ascribed authors of the canonical gospels. The Early Church Fathers ascribed to him authorship of both the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles. Prominent figures in early Christianity such as Jerome and Eusebius later reaffirmed his authorship, although a lack of conclusive evidence as to the identity of the author of the works has led to discussion in scholarly circles, both secular and religious.
Go to Profile#2740
Walter Rauschenbusch
1861 - 1918 (57 years)
Walter Rauschenbusch was an American theologian and Baptist pastor who taught at the Rochester Theological Seminary. Rauschenbusch was a key figure in the Social Gospel and single tax movements that flourished in the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was also the maternal grandfather of the influential philosopher Richard Rorty and the great-grandfather of Paul Raushenbush.
Go to Profile#2741
Michael Servetus
1511 - 1553 (42 years)
Michael Servetus was a Spanish theologian, physician, cartographer, and Renaissance humanist. He was the first European to correctly describe the function of pulmonary circulation, as discussed in Christianismi Restitutio . He was a polymath versed in many sciences: mathematics, astronomy and meteorology, geography, human anatomy, medicine and pharmacology, as well as jurisprudence, translation, poetry, and the scholarly study of the Bible in its original languages.
Go to Profile#2742
Wilhelm Gesenius
1786 - 1842 (56 years)
Heinrich Friedrich Wilhelm Gesenius was a German orientalist, lexicographer, Christian Hebraist, Lutheran theologian, Biblical scholar and critic. Biography Gesenius was born at Nordhausen. In 1803 he became a student of philosophy and theology at the University of Helmstedt, where Heinrich Henke was his most influential teacher; but the latter part of his university course was taken at Göttingen, where Johann Gottfried Eichhorn and Thomas Christian Tychsen were then at the height of their popularity. In 1806, shortly after graduation, he became Repetent and Privatdozent at Göttingen; and, as he was later proud to say, had August Neander for his first pupil in Hebrew language.
Go to Profile#2743
Francis Spellman
1889 - 1967 (78 years)
Francis Joseph Spellman was an American prelate of the Catholic Church. From 1939 to his death, he served as the sixth Archbishop of New York; he had served as an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Boston from 1932 to 1939. He was created a cardinal in 1946.
Go to Profile#2744
William Booth
1829 - 1912 (83 years)
William Booth was an English Methodist preacher who, along with his wife, Catherine, founded the Salvation Army and became its first General . The Christian movement with a quasi-military structure and government founded in 1865 has spread from London to many parts of the world. It is known for being one of the largest distributors of humanitarian aid.
Go to Profile#2745
Teresa of Ávila
1515 - 1582 (67 years)
Teresa of Ávila, OCD , also called Saint Teresa of Jesus, was a Carmelite nun and prominent Spanish mystic and religious reformer. Active during the Counter-Reformation, Teresa became the central figure of a movement of spiritual and monastic renewal, reforming the Carmelite Orders of both women and men. The movement was later joined by the younger Carmelite friar and mystic John of the Cross, with whom she established the Discalced Carmelites. A formal papal decree adopting the split from the old order was issued in 1580.
Go to Profile#2746
Shimon bar Yochai
71 - 160 (89 years)
Shimon bar Yochai or Shimon ben Yochai , also known by the acronym Rashbi, was a 2nd-century tannaitic sage in ancient Judea. He was one of the most eminent disciples of Rabbi Akiva. The Zohar, a 13th century foundational work of Kabbalah, is ascribed to him by Kabbalistic tradition.
Go to Profile#2747
Gustaf Aulén
1879 - 1977 (98 years)
Gustaf Emanuel Hildebrand Aulén was the Bishop of Strängnäs in the Church of Sweden, a Lutheran theologian, and the author of Christus Victor, a work which still exerts considerable influence on contemporary theological thinking on the atonement.
Go to Profile#2748
Hillel the Elder
70 BC - 8 (78 years)
Hillel was a Jewish religious leader, sage and scholar associated with the development of the Mishnah and the Talmud and the founder of the House of Hillel school of tannaim. He was active during the end of the first century BCE and the beginning of the first century CE.
Go to Profile#2749
William Paley
1743 - 1805 (62 years)
William Paley was an English Anglican clergyman, Christian apologist, philosopher, and utilitarian. He is best known for his natural theology exposition of the teleological argument for the existence of God in his work Natural Theology or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, which made use of the watchmaker analogy.
Go to Profile#2750
Ferdinand Christian Baur
1792 - 1860 (68 years)
Ferdinand Christian Baur was a German Protestant theologian and founder and leader of the Tübingen School of theology . Following Hegel's theory of dialectic, Baur argued that second century Christianity represented the synthesis of two opposing theses: Jewish Christianity and Gentile Christianity . This and the rest of Baur's work had a profound impact upon higher criticism of biblical and related texts.
Go to Profile