The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.
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List of the most influential people in Religious Studies,
#2751
William Beveridge
1637 - 1708 (71 years)
William Beveridge was an English writer and clergyman who served as Bishop of St Asaph from 1704 until his death. Life Son of the Rev. William Beveridge, B.D., he was born at Barrow, near Leicester, and baptised on 21 February 1637 at Barrow, Leicestershire, of which his grandfather, father, and elder brother John were successively vicars. He was first taught by his learned father and for two years was sent to Oakham School, Rutland, where William Cave was his school fellow.
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Thomas Walter Manson
1893 - 1958 (65 years)
Thomas Walter Manson, FBA was an English biblical scholar. Born in North Shields in 1893, he was educated at Tynemouth Municipal High School and the University of Glasgow where he was awarded an M.A. In 1922 he entered Westminster College, Cambridge, for training as a minister of the Presbyterian Church of England, and concurrently Christ's College where he read for the Oriental Tripos. In 1925 he was ordained as a minister and after a period at the Jewish Mission Institute in Bethnal Green he became minister at Falstone Church, Northumberland, in 1926. In the same year he married Nora Wallace...
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Francis Lambert
1486 - 1530 (44 years)
Francis Lambert was a Protestant reformer, the son of a papal official at Avignon, where he was born between 1485 and 1487. At the age of 15 he entered the Franciscan monastery at Avignon, and after 1517 he was an itinerant preacher, travelling through France, Italy and Switzerland. Lambert's study of the Scriptures shook his faith in Roman Catholic theology, and by 1522 he had abandoned his order, and became known to the leaders of the Reformation in Switzerland and Germany. He did not, however, identify himself either with Zwinglianism or Lutheranism; he debated with Huldrych Zwingli at Zür...
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Christian Wilhelm Niedner
1797 - 1865 (68 years)
Christian Wilhelm Niedner was a German church historian and theologian born in Oberwinkel, which today is part of the town of Waldenburg, Saxony. He studied theology at the University of Leipzig, where in 1826 he received his habilitation. In 1829 he was appointed associate professor, and in 1838 became a full professor of theology at Leipzig. From 1845 onward, he was head of the Leipzig Historical and Theological Society. In 1850 he resigned his professorship and moved to Wittenberg, where he focused on private studies. In 1859 Niedner was appointed professor of historical theology at Berlin...
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Sitanath Tattwabhushan
1856 - Present (170 years)
Pandit Sitanath Tattwabhushan was the official theologian and philosopher of the Sadharan Brahmo Samaj. His hymns still form the basis of Brahmo rites and liturgies. Early life He was born Sitanath Dutta, in a village in Sylhet in 1856. He arrived in Calcutta for higher education in 1871. Although he initially joined Keshub Chunder Sen's Brahmo Niketan where he developed an interest in the philosophy of religion. However following the closure of that institute, he joined Alexander Duff's General Assembly's Institution in 1875. In 1879, he joined Anandamohan Bose's City School as a teacher. La...
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Georg Christian Benedict Ackermann
1763 - 1833 (70 years)
Georg Christian Benedict Ackermann was a German theologian and teacher. He was born in Vier upon the river Elbe. He visited school in Schwerin in Mecklenburg, then in 1782 the University of Göttingen in Hanover to study theology.
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Robert Rainy
1826 - 1906 (80 years)
Robert Rainy , was a Scottish Presbyterian divine. Rainy Hall in New College, Edinburgh is named after him. Life He was born on New Year's Day 1826 at 28 Montrose Street in Glasgow, Scotland, the son of Dr. Harry Rainy LLD a surgeon who later served as Professor of Forensic Medicine in the University of Glasgow, and his wife Barbara Gordon . The family lived at 28 Montrose Street. One of his uncles was George Rainy, the noted slave plantation owner and personality involved in the Highland Clearances.
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David Cassel
1818 - 1893 (75 years)
David Cassel was a German historian and Jewish theologian. Life Cassel was born in Gross-Glogau, a city in Prussian Silesia with a large Jewish community. He graduated from its gymnasium. His brother was Selig Cassel.
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William Chillingworth
1602 - 1644 (42 years)
William Chillingworth was a controversial English churchman. Early life He was born in Oxford, where his father served as mayor; William Laud was his godfather. In June 1618 he became a scholar of Trinity College, Oxford, of which he was made a fellow in June 1628. He gained a reputation as a skilful debater, excelled in mathematics, and also became known as a poet. He associated with Sir Lucius Cary, John Hales, and Gilbert Sheldon.
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Sixtinus Amama
1593 - 1629 (36 years)
Sixtinus Amama was a Dutch Reformed theologian and orientalist. Amama was among the first to advocate a thorough knowledge of the original languages of the Bible as indispensable to theologians. Life He was born in Franeker, in the Dutch province of Friesland. He studied oriental languages from 1610 at the University of Franeker and then at the University of Oxford, attracted there by John Prideaux. In 1614 he took up also the study of Arabic at the University of Leyden where he made the acquaintance of Thomas Erpenius.
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Louise Pettibone Smith
1887 - 1981 (94 years)
Louise Pettibone Smith was an American biblical scholar, professor, translator, author and social activist. She was the first woman published in the Journal of Biblical Literature in 1917. She later became chair of the American Committee for the Protection of Foreign Born and denounced the House Un-American Activities Committee for its "McCarthyism".
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Adolph Ernst Knoch
1874 - 1965 (91 years)
Adolph Ernst Knoch was the author of numerous theological writings and a Bible publisher. Knoch founded the Concordant Publishing Concern and translated the Concordant Version of the Bible. Life Knoch was raised in a German-speaking part of Missouri, born in St. Louis, Missouri as the son of Adolph Knoch, who had emigrated from Germany to the United States . One of his sisters, Addie, remained in Germany. Knoch grew up bilingually: in his parents' house only German was spoken; Knoch learned English only at school.
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Gottlieb Tobias Wilhelm
1758 - 1811 (53 years)
Gottlieb Tobias Wilhelm was a Protestant pastor and natural history writer, probably best known for his monumental "Unterhaltungen aus der Naturgeschichte" . He was the fourth of 14 children and son of Augsburg engraver and publisher Christian Art Wilhelm, proprietor of Martin Engelbrecht Art Dealer. He attended the Gymnasium bei St. Anna from 1767 to 1777, and between 1777 and 1781 studied theology, philosophy and philology in Leipzig under Professor Ernst Platner, Samuel Frederick Nathanael Morus and Johann August Ernesti. From 1781 he was in the service of the Protestant Church in Augsburg, and also a teacher at the high school at St.
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Berchtold Haller
1492 - 1536 (44 years)
Berchtold Haller was a German Protestant reformer. He was the reformer of the city of Bern, Switzerland, where the Reformation received little to none opposition. Haller was born at Aldingen in Württemberg. After schooling in Pforzheim, where he established a friendship with Philipp Melanchthon, he studied theology in Cologne. He became a teacher in Rottweil in 1510 and in Bern in 1513, where he was appointed assistant preacher at the church of St Vincent in 1515. In 1520 he became a canon and the people's priest.
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Robert Baillie
1602 - 1662 (60 years)
Robert Baillie was a Church of Scotland minister who became famous as an author and a propagandist for the Covenanters. In Baillie's engagement with the theological and liturgical controversies of the mid-Seventeenth Century, Baillie sought to reconcile his strong belief in maintaining Kirk unity with a firm adherence to a Christian doctrine dictated by the divine 'truth' revealed in Scripture.
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Antonio Ballerini
1805 - 1881 (76 years)
Antonio Ballerini was an Italian Jesuit theologian. Biography Ballerini was born in Medicina, in what is now the Province of Bologna. He entered the Society of Jesus, on 13 October 1826. He was professor of philosophy at Ferentino, of ecclesiastical history at Rome and at Fermo, of moral theology at the Roman College.
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John Baptist Miège
1815 - 1884 (69 years)
John Baptist Miège, S.J. , was a Jesuit prelate and missionary. In addition to a career in education, he served as Vicar Apostolic of Kansas from 1851 to 1874. Early life Miège was born in a house called La Forêt, in the village of Mercury , in the Duchy of Savoy as the youngest son of a wealthy and pious family. At a young age he was committed to the care of his brother Urban, who was director of the diocesan seminary of Moûtiers. After completing his literary course at age 19, he was dissuaded from a career in the army and remained at Moûtiers for two years, studying philosophy.
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Elmore Harris
1855 - 1911 (56 years)
Elmore Harris was a Canadian Baptist pastor. He was the founder of the Walmer Road Baptist Church and one of the founders of Toronto Bible Training School in 1894 which soon changed its name to Toronto Bible College .
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George Smeaton
1814 - 1889 (75 years)
George Smeaton was a 19th-century Scottish theologian and Greek scholar. Life He was born in Berwickshire on 8 April 1814. He studied Theology at Edinburgh University and Divinity Hall in Edinburgh. From around 1835 he operated as an urban missionary in North Leith, the harbour area of Edinburgh.
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Henry James Sr.
1811 - 1882 (71 years)
Henry James Sr. was an American theologian and the father of the philosopher William James, the novelist Henry James, and the diarist Alice James. Following a dramatic moment of spiritual enlightenment, he became deeply absorbed in Swedenborgianism, repudiating materialism and following the utopian path to grace. In this way, he was generally out of sympathy with contemporary American leaders of philosophical thought. His influence was felt more in frequent lively debates within his own circle of friends than in public life. He said “I love the fireside rather than the forum."
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Taito Kantonen
1900 - 1993 (93 years)
Taito A. Kantonen was an American academic and theologian. Early life and education Kantonen was born in Karstula, Finland, the son of David and Elli Kantonen. At the age of three, he moved to the United States, where he later attended Harvard University and received a degree in theology.
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William Palmer
1803 - 1885 (82 years)
William Patrick Palmer , who called himself Sir William Palmer, 9th Baronet, from 1865 , was an Anglican theologian and liturgical scholar of the 19th century. Life Born 14 February 1803, Palmer graduated from Worcester College, Oxford. He was an early supporter and influence in the Oxford Movement, but was superseded by John Henry Newman and Edward Pusey. Palmer initially supported the Tracts for the Times, but as opposition to the Oxford Movement grew, he withdrew his support, prompting a cooling in his friendship with Newman and a slow decline in his involvement with the movement. Palmer di...
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John J. Keane
1839 - 1918 (79 years)
John Joseph Keane was an Irish-born American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as the archbishop of the Archdiocese of Dubuque in Iowa from 1900 to 1911. He previously served as bishop of the Diocese of Richmond in Virginia from 1878 to 1888.
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Nathaniel Holmes
1599 - 1678 (79 years)
Nathaniel Holmes or Homes was an English Independent theologian and preacher. He has been described as a “Puritan writer of great ability". Life He graduated with a B.A. from Exeter College, Oxford in 1620; and with an M.A. from Magdalen Hall, Oxford in 1623. He later founded an Independent church, with Henry Burton; he was rector of St Mary Staining, Oat Lane, Aldersgate, in London to 1662. In 1644 his Gospell-Musick defended and promoted psalm-singing, and reprinted the preface to the Bay Psalm Book.
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Heinrich Hansen
1861 - 1940 (79 years)
Heinrich Hansen was a German Lutheran theologian and the father of the Lutheran High Church movement in Germany. Hansen was born in Klockries near Lindholm as a son of a teacher. In Kiel and Erlangen he studied theology, Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic and in particular the Old Testament under August Klostermann. He worked since 1887 as a pastor in Schleswig-Holstein: in Reinfeld, Lindholm, on the island Pellworm, in Kropp and in Olderup near Husum.
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Harrison Gray Otis Dwight
1803 - 1862 (59 years)
Harrison Gray Otis Dwight was an American Congregational missionary. Biography Harrison Gray Otis Dwight was born on November 22, 1803, in Conway, Massachusetts. His father was Seth Dwight and mother was Hannah Strong .
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Johann Georg Abicht
1672 - 1740 (68 years)
Johann Georg Abicht was a German Lutheran theologian, born at Königsee, Schwarzburg-Sondershausen. After finishing his studies at the universities of Jena and Leipzig, Abicht became teacher of oriental languages at the latter in 1702. In 1707 he was appointed rector of the college of Danzig and pastor at the Holy Trinity Church. In 1729 he was appointed general superintendent, professor of theology and pastor at the town church of Wittenberg.
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William Allen
1532 - 1594 (62 years)
William Allen , also known as Guilielmus Alanus or Gulielmus Alanus, was an English Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. He was an ordained priest, but was never a bishop. His main role was setting up colleges to train English missionary priests with the mission of returning secretly to England to keep Roman Catholicism alive there. Allen assisted in the planning of the Spanish Armada's attempted invasion of England in 1588. It failed badly, but if it had succeeded he would probably have been made Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Chancellor. The Douai-Rheims Bible, a complete translation into English from Latin, was printed under Allen's orders.
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Hermann Olshausen
1796 - 1839 (43 years)
Hermann Olshausen was a German theologian. Biography Olshausen was born at Oldeslohe in Holstein. He was educated at the universities of Kiel and Berlin , where he was influenced by Schleiermacher and Neander. In 1817 he was awarded the prize at the Festival of the Reformation for an essay, Melanchthons Charakteristik aus seinen Briefen dargestellt . This essay brought him to the notice of the Prussian Minister of Public Worship, and in 1820 he became Privatdozent at Berlin. In 1821, he became professor extraordinarius at the University of Königsberg, and in 1827 professor. In 1834, he becam...
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Honorius Augustodunensis
1080 - 1154 (74 years)
Honorius Augustodunensis , commonly known as Honorius of Autun, was a very popular 12th-century Christian theologian who wrote prolifically on many subjects. He wrote in a non-scholastic manner, with a lively style, and his works were approachable for the lay community in general. He was, therefore, something of a popularizer of clerical learning.
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Johann Martin Miller
1750 - 1814 (64 years)
Johann Martin Miller was a German theologian and writer. He is best known for his novel Siegwart, which became one of the most successful books at the time. Life Miller, the son of the Evangelical pastor Johann Michael Miller , was born in Jungingen, nowadays part of the city of Ulm. From 15 October 1770, he studied theology at the University of Göttingen, where he helped to establish the Göttinger Hainbund. Through this literary group, founded in 1772, Miller became acquainted with Matthias Claudius, Gottfried August Bürger, Ludwig Christoph Heinrich Hölty, Johann Heinrich Voss, and Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock.
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Anthony Tuckney
1599 - 1670 (71 years)
Anthony Tuckney was an English Puritan theologian and scholar. Life Anthony Tuckney was educated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and a fellow there from 1619 to 1630. He was town preacher at Boston, Lincolnshire from 1629 and in 1633, succeeded John Cotton as vicar of St Botolph's Church, Boston.
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Willem Duynstee
1886 - 1968 (82 years)
Willem Duynstee was a Catholic priest, jurist, moralist, and professor born at Sittard, the Netherlands, in 1886. After gaining a doctorate in criminal law in 1908, Willem joined the Redemptorists and was ordained a priest in 1913. In 1935, he was the first to provide a Thomist understanding of psychological repression and therapy which was fundamentally different from that of the neurologist Sigmund Freud. Duynstee was proficient in the anthropology and philosophy of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, whereas Freud invented his own language and explanations for what became the onset of psychoanalysis.
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Eugen Sachsse
1839 - 1917 (78 years)
Eugen Friedrich Ferdinand Sachsse was a German Protestant theologian born in Cologne. He studied theology in Bonn and Berlin, receiving his habilitiation in 1863 with a thesis on the Pietism of Philipp Jakob Spener. From 1871, he served at the rectory in Hamm, where in 1872 he became district school superintendent . In 1883, he was appointed director of the minister's seminary in Herborn.
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Jacobus Trigland
1583 - 1654 (71 years)
Jacobus Trigland was a Dutch Reformed theologian. After the Synod of Dort of 1618–19, he worked and wrote against the Remonstrants. Life He was born at Vianen to Roman Catholic parents. Brought up by relatives at Gouda, he was sent, in 1597, to some priests at Amsterdam to study theology. Toward the end of 1598 he went to Leuven where doubts arose in his mind which ultimately led him to break with Catholicism. He was entrusted with a mission to Haarlem by the head of the Collegium Pontificium, and never returned to Leuven. After a few weeks at Gouda, where his foster relations rejected him, ...
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Abraham Hinckelmann
1652 - 1695 (43 years)
Abraham Hinckelmann , a German Protestant theologian, was an Islamologist who was one of the first to print a complete Qur'an in Hamburg. Later, a cleric named Ludovico Marracci from the "Society of the Monks of the Divine Path" published a better version.
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Simon Grynaeus
1493 - 1541 (48 years)
Simon Grynaeus was a German scholar and theologian of the Protestant Reformation. Biography Grynaeus was the son of Jacob Gryner, a Swabian peasant, and was born at Veringendorf, in Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen. He adopted the name "Grynaeus" from the epithet of Apollo in Virgil. He was a schoolmate of Melanchthon at Pforzheim, whence he went to the University of Vienna, distinguishing himself there as a Latinist and Hellenist.
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Johann Michael Raich
1832 - 1907 (75 years)
Johann Michael Raich was a Catholic theologian. Biography Raich pursued his gymnasial studies under the Benedictines at St. Stephen's at Augsburg, and studied philosophy and theology at the Collegium Germanicum at Rome . On 29 May 1858, he was ordained priest at the same place. In the autumn of 1859 he left Rome and went to Mainz as secretary of Bishop von Ketteler. He accompanied the bishop on journeys and thus was at Rome during the Vatican Council. He was also a cathedral prebend from 4 May 1867. After the death of Bishop von Ketteler, during the years of the Kulturkampf, Raich had a position in the episcopal Chancery.
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Giovanni Battista Riccioli
1598 - 1671 (73 years)
Giovanni Battista Riccioli, SJ was an Italian astronomer and a Catholic priest in the Jesuit order. He is known, among other things, for his experiments with pendulums and with falling bodies, for his discussion of 126 arguments concerning the motion of the Earth, and for introducing the current scheme of lunar nomenclature. He is also widely known for discovering the first double star. He argued that the rotation of the Earth should reveal itself because on a rotating Earth, the ground moves at different speeds at different times.
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Samuel Belkin
1911 - 1976 (65 years)
Samuel Belkin was the second President of Yeshiva University. An American Rabbi and distinguished Torah scholar, he is credited with leading Yeshiva University through a period of substantial expansion.
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Abu Raita al-Takriti
775 - 835 (60 years)
Abu Raita al-Takriti , was a 9th-century Syriac Orthodox theologian and apologist. Biography Little is known about Abu Raita's life, and although some sources portray him as a bishop of Tikrit there is no contemporary evidence to support this. Abu Raita referred to himself as a "teacher" . It appears that his reputation as a theologian made him so well known that he was recalled to defend his fellow non-Chalcedonian co-religionists in Armenia.
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Hugh Broughton
1549 - 1612 (63 years)
Hugh Broughton was an English scholar and theologian. Early life He was born at Owlbury, Bishop's Castle, Shropshire. He called himself a Cambrian, implying Welsh blood in his veins. He was educated by Bernard Gilpin at Houghton-le-Spring and at Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he matriculated in 1570. The foundation of his Hebrew learning was laid, in his first year at Cambridge, by his attendance on the lectures of the French scholar Antoine Rodolphe Chevallier.
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Julius Micrander
1640 - 1702 (62 years)
Julius Erici Micrander Uplandiensis was a Swedish professor, member of the Swedish Parliament, and vicar with the Church of Sweden. Biography Micrander was born in the rectory of Bro Church in Uppland, Sweden. His father was Ericus Georgi Micranderan, vicar in Tierp parish and his mother was Benedicta Eriksdotter. By age 10, Micrander was a student at Uppsala University. At age 28, he was studying for a master's degree with the De educatione liberorum.
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Johann Jakob Stähelin
1797 - 1875 (78 years)
Johann Jakob Stähelin was a Swiss theologian, who specialized in Old Testament studies. From 1817 to 1821 he studied theology at the University of Tübingen. In 1823 he received his PhD and subsequently worked as a lecturer at the University of Basel. In 1829 he became an associate professor at Basel, where in 1835 he was named a full professor of Old Testament studies. In 1842 he obtained his doctorate of divinity, and in 1846 was appointed university rector.
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Gustav Leopold Plitt
1836 - 1880 (44 years)
Gustav Leopold Plitt was a German Protestant theologian. From 1854 to 1858, he studied theology at the Universities of Erlangen and Berlin. At Erlangen he was influenced by the work of Johann Christian Konrad von Hofmann. In January 1862, he became a privat-docent of theology at Erlangen, where he later became an associate professor and a full professor of theology .
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Frederick Oakeley
1802 - 1880 (78 years)
Frederick Oakeley was an English Roman Catholic convert, priest, and author. He was ordained in the Church of England in 1828 and in 1845 converted to the Church of Rome, becoming Canon of the Westminster Diocese in 1852. He is best known for his translation of the Christmas carol Adeste Fideles from Latin into English.
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George Benson
1699 - 1762 (63 years)
George Benson was an English Presbyterian pastor and theologian who was noted for his publications on the Christian epistles. Benson often conversed with dignitaries such as Lord Chancellor Peter King and Edmund Law, the bishop of Carlisle. According to Alexander Balloch Grosart, writing in the Dictionary of National Biography, Benson's views were "Socinian" though at this period the term is often confused with Arian.
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Christoph Birkmann
1703 - 1771 (68 years)
Christoph Birkmann was a German theologian and minister. A pupil of Johann Sebastian Bach, he has been identified as the author of the texts of several Bach cantatas. Career Born in Nuremberg, Birkmann received some musical training. He spent a year at the University of Altdorf before studying theology and mathematics at the University of Leipzig from 1724 to 1727.
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Anne Zernike
1887 - 1972 (85 years)
Anne Zernike was a Dutch, liberal theologian, who was the first ordained woman minister of the Netherlands. Though she began her career with the Mennonites, which was the only congregation that allowed female ministers at the time, the majority of her career was spent in the Dutch Protestant Association .
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John Pearson
1613 - 1686 (73 years)
John Pearson was an English theologian and scholar. Life He was born at Great Snoring, Norfolk. From Eton College he passed to Queens' College, Cambridge, and was elected a scholar of King's College, Cambridge in April 1632, and a fellow in 1634. On taking orders in 1639 he was collated to the Salisbury prebend of Nether-Avon. In 1640 he was appointed chaplain to the lord-keeper Finch, by whom he was presented to the living of Thorington in Suffolk. In the Civil War he acted as chaplain to George Goring's forces in the west. In 1654 he was made weekly preacher at St Clement's, Eastcheap, in L...
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