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,
#2751
Heinrich Ernst Ferdinand Guericke
1803 - 1878 (75 years)
Heinrich Ernst Ferdinand Guericke , was a German theologian. He was born at Wettin in Saxony and studied theology at the University of Halle, where he was appointed associate professor in 1829. He disapproved of the union between the Lutheran and the Reformed churches, which had been accomplished by the Prussian government in 1817, and in 1833 he joined the Old Lutherans. In 1835 he lost his professorship, but he regained it in 1840.
Go to Profile#2752
Eberhard Arnold
1883 - 1935 (52 years)
Eberhard Arnold was a German theologian and Christian writer. He was the founder of the Bruderhof in 1920. Early life Arnold was born in Königsberg, East Prussia, Germany, the third child of Carl Franklin and Elizabeth Arnold. His father was a doctor of theology and philosophy, and his paternal grandfather was a pastor and missionary of the Evangelical State Church of Prussia's older Provinces. Eberhard Arnold's life as a youth was unconventional. In 1899 at age 16, Arnold experienced an inner change, which he acknowledged as God's acceptance and the forgiveness of sins, and felt a calling t...
Go to Profile#2753
John of St. Thomas
1589 - 1644 (55 years)
John of St. Thomas, O.P., born João Poinsot , was a Portuguese Dominican friar, Thomist theologian, and professor of philosophy. He is known for being an early theorist in the field of semiotics. Biography Of noble parentage, he was sent early to the University of Coimbra, displayed talents of the first order, completed his humanities and philosophy, and obtained the degree of Master of Arts. He then entered the University of Louvain. Here, too, he showed remarkable ability, and won the title of Bachelor of Theology at an early age. He joined the Dominicans at Madrid in 1612 or 1613, taking the name of John of St.
Go to Profile#2754
Johann Heinrich Achterfeldt
1788 - 1877 (89 years)
Johann Heinrich Achterfeldt was a German theologian. Achterfeldt was born at Wesel. He was appointed professor of theology at Bonn in 1826 and in 1832 he founded with his colleague, Joseph Braun, the Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Katholische Theologie, the chief purpose of which was to defend the teachings of George Hermes.
Go to Profile#2755
Jan Standonck
1453 - 1504 (51 years)
Jan Standonck was a Flemish priest, Scholastic, and reformer. He was part of the great movement for reform in the 15th-century French church. His approach was to reform the recruitment and education of the clergy, along very ascetic lines, heavily influenced by the hermit saint Francis of Paola. To this end he founded many colleges, all of them strictly controlled and dedicated to poor students with real vocations. Chief amongst them was the Collège de Montaigu, latterly part of the University of Paris. He lived at a time when this model of reform was under increasing pressure from more thoro...
Go to Profile#2756
Soga Ryōjin
1875 - 1971 (96 years)
Soga Ryōjin was a Japanese Buddhist philosopher and priest of the Ōtani-ha of Jōdo Shinshū Buddhism. He served as the 17th president of Ōtani University from 1961 to 1967. Biography Soga was born in the city of Niigata, Niigata Prefecture. He entered Shinshu University, later known as Ōtani University, and graduated in 1901. After graduation from Shinshū, Soga returned to Niigata and became the adopted son-in-law of the priest of Jō'on-ji, a temple in Mitsuke, Niigata.
Go to Profile#2757
Heinrich Schlier
1900 - 1978 (78 years)
Heinrich Schlier was a theologian, initially with the protestant Church and later with the Catholic Church. Biography Schlier was the son of a military doctor and attended the High School-Gymnasium in Landau and Ingolstadt, participated in World War I, and in 1919 studied Evangelical Theology at the university of Marburg, Leipzig and Jena. From 1927, he served as pastor and teacher of the New Testament in Halle, Saxony-Anhalt and Wuppertal. From 1935, Schlier was part of the Confessing Church , an opposition movement which arose in the Evangelical German Church against the attempt of the German Nazi regime to align the teaching and organisation of the Evangelical Church to Nazism.
Go to Profile#2758
Johann Tobias Beck
1804 - 1878 (74 years)
Johann Tobias Beck was a German theologian. Biography Graduating from the University of Tübingen in 1826, he was ordained a minister, but later accepted an appointment as professor of theology at the University of Basel. In 1843 he went to Tübingen, where he filled the same position.
Go to Profile#2759
Jean Réville
1854 - 1908 (54 years)
Jean Réville was a French Protestant theologian born in Rotterdam, Netherlands. He was the son of theologian Albert Réville . He studied theology at Geneva, Berlin and Heidelberg, obtaining his licentiate in theology in Paris . He subsequently became a pastor in Sainte-Suzanne, Doubs, and in 1886 received his doctorate in theology at the Protestant Faculty of Theology in Paris. In 1894 he was appointed professor of patristics to the theological faculty at the Sorbonne.
Go to Profile#2760
Al-Tahawi
853 - 935 (82 years)
Abu Ja'far Ahmad al-Tahawi , or simply aṭ-Ṭaḥāwī , was an Egyptian Arab Hanafi jurist and Traditionalist theologian. He studied with his uncle al-Muzani and was a Shafi'i jurist, before then changing to the Hanafi school. He is known for his work al-'Aqidah al-Tahawiyyah, a summary of Sunni Islamic creed which influenced Hanafis in Egypt.
Go to Profile#2761
Shoki Coe
1914 - 1988 (74 years)
Shoki Coe was a minister of the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan, erstwhile principal of Tainan Theological Seminary and director of the Theological Education Fund of the World Council of Churches. Through the Theological Education Fund, he is widely known for his coinage of the notion of "contextualizing theology," later better known as "contextual theology," which argues for theology's need to respond to the sociopolitical concerns of a local context. He was named by Kosuke Koyama as the latter's spiritual father.
Go to Profile#2762
Margaret the Virgin
292 - 307 (15 years)
Margaret, known as Margaret of Antioch in the West, and as Saint Marina the Great Martyr in the East, is celebrated as a saint on 20 July in Western Christianity, on 17 July by the Eastern Orthodox Church, and on Epip 23 and Hathor 23 in the Coptic Orthodox Church.
Go to Profile#2763
Yisrael Meir Kagan
1838 - 1933 (95 years)
Yisrael Meir ha-Kohen Kagan , known popularly as the Chofetz Chaim, after his book on lashon hara, who was also well known for the Mishna Berurah, his book on ritual law, was an influential Lithuanian Jewish rabbi, Halakhist, posek, and ethicist whose works continue to be widely influential in Orthodox Jewish life.
Go to Profile#2764
Johann Georg Walch
1693 - 1775 (82 years)
Johann Georg Walch was a German Lutheran theologian. Life He was born in Meiningen, where his father, Georg Walch, was general superintendent. He studied at Leipzig and Jena, amongst his teachers being J. F. Buddeus, whose only daughter he married. He published in 1716 a work, Historia critica Latinae linguae, which soon came into wide use. Two years later he became professor extraordinarius of philosophy at Jena. In 1719, he was appointed professor ordinarius of rhetoric, in 1721 of poetry, and in 1724 professor extraordinarius of theology. In 1728 he became professor ordinarius of theology...
Go to Profile#2765
William Sanday
1843 - 1920 (77 years)
William Sanday was a British Anglican theologian and priest. He was the Dean Ireland's Professor of Exegesis of Holy Scripture from 1883 to 1895 and the Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity from 1895 to 1919; both chairs were at the University of Oxford. He had previously been Master of Bishop Hatfield's Hall, University of Durham.
Go to Profile#2766
Sebastian Castellio
1515 - 1563 (48 years)
Sebastian Castellio was a French preacher and theologian; and one of the first Reformed Christian proponents of religious toleration, freedom of conscience and thought. Introduction Castellio was born in 1515 at Saint-Martin-du-Frêne in the village of Bresse of Dauphiné, the country bordering Switzerland, France, and Savoy. Under the Savoyard rule his family called itself Chateillon, Chatillon, or Chataillon. Having been educated at the age of twenty at the University of Lyon, Castellio was fluent in both French and Italian, and became an expert in Latin, Hebrew and Greek as well. Subseque...
Go to Profile#2767
Friedrich Adolf Philippi
1809 - 1882 (73 years)
Friedrich Adolf Philippi was a Lutheran theologian of Jewish origin. He was the son of a wealthy Jewish banker, a friend of the Mendelssohn family. Converted to Christianity in 1829, he studied philosophy and theology at Berlin and Leipzig , and became successively a teacher at a private school in Dresden and at the Joachimsthalsche Gymnasium at Berlin .
Go to Profile#2768
Herman Hoeksema
1886 - 1965 (79 years)
Herman Hoeksema was a Dutch Reformed theologian. Hoeksema served as a long time pastor of the First Protestant Reformed Church in Grand Rapids. In 1924 he refused to accept the three points of common grace as formulated which had then been declared official church dogma of the Christian Reformed Church, as an addition to its adopted creeds and confessions. The result of this controversy was that Hoeksema, and ministers George Ophoff, and Henry Danhof, were deposed by their respective classes before leaving the CRC with their congregations. These men then established the Protestant Reformed Churches.
Go to Profile#2769
Paul Petter Waldenström
1838 - 1917 (79 years)
Paul Petter Waldenström was a Swedish lecturer, priest in the Church of Sweden and theologian, member of the Riksdag, and writer, who became the most prominent leader of the free church movement in late 19th-century Sweden.
Go to Profile#2770
Eusebius of Emesa
295 - 360 (65 years)
Eusebius of Emesa was a learned Christian cleric of the Greek church, and a pupil of Eusebius of Caesarea. He was born in Edessa and became the bishop of Emesa . The Latin form of his name is Eusebius Emesenus.
Go to Profile#2771
Kirsopp Lake
1872 - 1946 (74 years)
Kirsopp Lake was an English New Testament scholar, Church historian, Greek Palaeographer, and Winn Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Harvard Divinity School. He had an uncommon breadth of interests. His main lines of research were the history of early Christianity, textual criticism of the New Testament, and Greek palaeography, in which fields he published definitive monographs. He also studied the historical figure of Jesus and wrote about theology and archaeology . He edited and translated a two-volume anthology of ancient Christian literature and the first five books of Eusebius' Chur...
Go to Profile#2772
Joseph Estlin Carpenter
1844 - 1927 (83 years)
Joseph Estlin Carpenter was an English Unitarian minister, the principal of Manchester College, Oxford. He was an expert in Sanskrit and a pioneer in the study of comparative religion. Biography Carpenter was born in Ripley, Surrey. He was the second son of William Benjamin Carpenter. His grandfather was Unitarian minister Lant Carpenter.
Go to Profile#2773
Louis-Nazaire Bégin
1840 - 1925 (85 years)
Louis-Nazaire Bégin was a Canadian Cardinal of the Catholic Church. Begin held a doctorate in Sacred Theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome and was later appointed Archbishop of Quebec by Pope Leo XIII and created cardinal by Pope Pius X .
Go to Profile#2774
Prosper of Aquitaine
390 - 463 (73 years)
Prosper of Aquitaine , a Christian writer and disciple of Augustine of Hippo, was the first continuator of Jerome's Universal Chronicle. Life Prosper was a native of Aquitaine, and may have been educated at Bordeaux. By 417 he arrived in Marseilles as a refugee from Aquitaine in the aftermath of the Gothic invasions of Gaul. In 429 he was corresponding with Augustine. In 431 he appeared in Rome to appeal to Pope Celestine I regarding the teachings of Augustine; there is no further trace of him until 440, the first year of the pontificate of Pope Leo I, who had been in Gaul, where he may have met Prosper.
Go to Profile#2775
Joseph G. Weiss
1918 - 1969 (51 years)
Joseph G. Weiss was a scholar of Jewish Mysticism and Hasidism. He was born in Budapest to a Neolog family, and studied both in university and at the Jewish Theological Seminary and after emigrating to Mandatory Palestine, studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem under the tutelage of Prof. Gershom Scholem from 1941 till 1950, when Weiss moved to England. In England Weiss first taught children aged 5–11 at a Jewish School in Leeds, before spending time in London, Manchester and Oxford, where he occupied various research and teaching positions, eventually becoming the director of the Ins...
Go to Profile#2776
John Miley
1813 - 1895 (82 years)
John Miley was an American Methodist Episcopal minister and theologian, who was one of the major Methodist theological voices of the 19th century. Biography Early life Miley was born the 25 December 1813 on a farm near Hamilton, Butler County, Ohio. Miley graduated from Augusta College where he received A.B. in 1834 and an A.M. in 1837. During his college life he was influenced by three professors Joseph Tomlinson, Joseph Trimble, and Henry Bascom.
Go to Profile#2777
Jakob Böhme
1575 - 1624 (49 years)
Jakob Böhme was a German philosopher, Christian mystic, and Lutheran Protestant theologian. He was considered an original thinker by many of his contemporaries within the Lutheran tradition, and his first book, commonly known as Aurora, caused a great scandal. In contemporary English, his name may be spelled Jacob Boehme ; in seventeenth-century England it was also spelled Behmen, approximating the contemporary English pronunciation of the German Böhme.
Go to Profile#2778
Karl Friedrich August Kahnis
1814 - 1888 (74 years)
Karl Friedrich August Kahnis was a German Neo-Lutheran theologian. Early life From a poor background, Kahnis was educated at the gymnasium of his native town Greiz, and after acting as private tutor for several years began the study of theology at Halle. He was at first an ardent Hegelian, but he passed to orthodox Lutheranism. The transition may be dated from the publication of his Dr. Ruge und Hegel: Ein Beitrag zur Würdigung Hegelscher Tendenzen .
Go to Profile#2779
Archibald Alexander Hodge
1823 - 1886 (63 years)
Archibald Alexander Hodge , an American Presbyterian minister, was the principal of Princeton Seminary between 1878 and 1886. Biography He was born on July 18, 1823, to Sarah and Charles Hodge in Princeton, New Jersey. He was named after Charles' mentor, the first principal of Princeton Seminary, Archibald Alexander.
Go to Profile#2780
Moshe Zvi Segal
1876 - 1968 (92 years)
Moshe Zvi Segal was an Israeli rabbi, linguist and Talmudic scholar. Biography Segal was born in Maishad, Lithuania in 1875. In 1896, he moved with his family to Scotland and subsequently to London. He was ordained as a rabbi in 1902 and later obtained a degree from Oxford University. He was the Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregation of Newcastle upon Tyne from 1910 to 1918, when he went to the British Mandate of Palestine as a member of the Zionist Commission with Chaim Weizmann.
Go to Profile#2781
Abraham Calovius
1612 - 1686 (74 years)
Abraham Calovius was a Lutheran theologian, and was one of the champions of Lutheran orthodoxy in the 17th century. Biography He was born in Mohrungen , Ducal Prussia, a fief of Crown of Poland. After studying at Königsberg, in 1650 he was appointed professor of theology at Wittenberg, where he afterwards became general superintendent and primarius.
Go to Profile#2782
Johannes Agricola
1494 - 1566 (72 years)
Johann or Johannes Agricola was a German Protestant Reformer during the Protestant Reformation. He was a follower and friend of Martin Luther, who became his antagonist in the matter of the binding obligation of the law on Christians.
Go to Profile#2783
Thomas Kelly Cheyne
1841 - 1915 (74 years)
Thomas Kelly Cheyne, was an English divine and biblical critic. Biography He was born in London and educated at Merchant Taylors' School, London, and Oxford University. Subsequently, he studied German theological methods at Göttingen. He was ordained in 1864 and held a fellowship at Balliol College, Oxford, from 1868 to 1882. During the earlier part of this period he stood alone in the university as a teacher of the main conclusions of Old Testament criticism at that time. In 1881 he was presented to the rectory of Tendring, in Essex, and in 1884 he was made a member of the Old Testament revision company.
Go to Profile#2784
Johann Conrad Dannhauer
1603 - 1666 (63 years)
Johann Conrad Dannhauer was an Orthodox Lutheran theologian and teacher of Spener. Dannhauer began his education in the gymnasium at Strasburg and was the master of a thorough philosophical training before he commenced his theological work in 1624. He continued his studies at Marburg, Altorf, and Jena, lecturing at the same time on philosophy and linguistics and winning recognition at Jena by his exegesis of the Epistle to the Ephesians. Returning to Strasburg in 1628, he entered upon an active career as administrator, teacher, and theologian. Made seminary inspector in 1628, he became in the...
Go to Profile#2785
P. T. Forsyth
1848 - 1921 (73 years)
Peter Taylor Forsyth, also known as P. T. Forsyth, was a Scottish theologian. Biography The son of a postman, Forsyth studied at the University of Aberdeen and then in Göttingen . He was ordained into the Congregational ministry and served churches as pastor at Bradford, Manchester, Leicester and Cambridge, before becoming Principal of Hackney College, London in 1901.
Go to Profile#2786
Gilbert Burnet
1643 - 1715 (72 years)
Gilbert Burnet was a Scottish philosopher and historian, and Bishop of Salisbury. He was fluent in Dutch, French, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. Burnet was highly respected as a cleric, a preacher, an academic, a writer and a historian. He was always closely associated with the Whig party, and was one of the few close friends in whom King William III confided.
Go to Profile#2787
Gottschalk of Orbais
805 - 869 (64 years)
Gottschalk of Orbais was a Saxon theologian, monk and poet. Gottschalk was an early advocate for the doctrine of two-fold predestination, an issue that ripped through both Italy and Francia from 848 into the 850s and 860s. Led by his own interpretation of Augustine's teachings on the matter, he claimed the sinfulness of human nature and the need to turn to God with a humility for salvation. He saw himself as a divine vessel calling all of Christianity to repent for decades of Civil War. His attempts of this new Christianisation of Francia ultimately failed, his doctrine was condemned as heresy at the 848 council of Mainz and 849 council of Quierzy.
Go to Profile#2788
Frédéric Auguste Lichtenberger
1832 - 1899 (67 years)
Frédéric Auguste Lichtenberger was a French theologian. Biography He obtained his degree in theology, and was made professor at the University of Strasbourg . In 1877 he was appointed professor in the newly founded Protestant faculty at Paris, of which he also became dean. In 1896, he received a D.D. from the University of Glasgow.
Go to Profile#2789
Ralph Cudworth
1617 - 1688 (71 years)
Ralph Cudworth was an English Anglican clergyman, Christian Hebraist, classicist, theologian and philosopher, and a leading figure among the Cambridge Platonists who became 11th Regius Professor of Hebrew , 26th Master of Clare Hall , and 14th Master of Christ's College . A leading opponent of Hobbes's political and philosophical views, his magnum opus was his The True Intellectual System of the Universe .
Go to Profile#2790
Edwin Lewis
1881 - 1959 (78 years)
Edwin Lewis was an American Methodist theologian primarily associated with Drew University in New Jersey. Born in Newbury, Berkshire, England, Lewis became a Methodist local preacher at the age of seventeen. In 1900 he traveled to Newfoundland, Canada as a missionary before continuing his education in the United States. He eventually became a professor of theology at Drew.
Go to Profile#2791
William Benjamin Smith
1850 - 1934 (84 years)
William Benjamin Smith was a professor of mathematics at Tulane University, best known as a proponent of the Christ myth theory. Biography In a series of books, beginning with Ecce Deus: The Pre-Christian Jesus, published in 1894, and ending with The Birth of the Gospel, published posthumously in 1954, Smith argued that the earliest Christian sources, particularly the Pauline epistles, stress Christ's divinity at the expense of any human personality, and that this would have been implausible, if there had been a human Jesus. Smith therefore argued that Christianity's origins lay in a pre-Chri...
Go to Profile#2792
Johannes Cocceius
1603 - 1669 (66 years)
Johannes Cocceius was a Dutch theologian born in Bremen. Life After studying at Hamburg and the University of Franeker, where Sixtinus Amama was one of his teachers, he became in 1630 professor of biblical philology at the Gymnasium illustre in his native town. In 1636 he was transferred to Franeker, where he held the chair of Hebrew, and from 1643 the chair of theology also, until 1650, when he succeeded the elder Friedrich Spanheim as professor of theology at the University of Leiden.
Go to Profile#2793
Nathaniel Lardner
1684 - 1768 (84 years)
Nathaniel Lardner was an English theologian. Life Lardner was born at Hawkhurst, Kent in 1684. He was the elder son of Richard Lardner , an independent minister, and of a daughter of Nathaniel Collyer or Collier, a Southwark tradesman. His sister Elizabeth married Daniel Neal, who studied with Lardner in Utrecht.
Go to Profile#2794
Charles Porterfield Krauth
1823 - 1883 (60 years)
Charles Porterfield Krauth was a pastor, theologian and educator in the Lutheran branch of Christianity. He is a leading figure in the revival of the Lutheran Confessions connected to Neo-Lutheranism in the United States.
Go to Profile#2795
Imam Shamil
1797 - 1871 (74 years)
Imam Shamil was the political, military, and spiritual leader of North Caucasian resistance to Imperial Russia in the 1800s, the third Imam of the Caucasian Imamate , and a Sunni Muslim shaykh of the Naqshbandi Sufis.
Go to Profile#2796
William Edwy Vine
1873 - 1949 (76 years)
William Edwy Vine , commonly known as W. E. Vine, was an English Biblical scholar, theologian, and writer, most famous for Vine's Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words. Life Vine was born in the second quarter of 1873, in Blandford Forum, Dorset. His father ran the Mount Radford School, which moved to Exeter in 1875, and it was in this location that Vine was raised. He became a Christian at an early age and was baptised in the Plymouth Brethren assembly in Fore Street, Exeter. At 17, Vine became a teacher at his father's school, before moving to Aberystwyth to study at the University College of Wales.
Go to Profile#2797
Antipope John XXIII
1370 - 1419 (49 years)
Baldassarre Cossa was Pisan antipope John XXIII during the Western Schism. The Catholic Church regards him as an antipope, as he opposed Pope Gregory XII whom the Catholic Church now recognizes as the rightful successor of Saint Peter. He was also an opponent of Antipope Benedict XIII, who was recognized by the French clergy and monarchy as the legitimate Pontiff.
Go to Profile#2798
Ezra Abbot
1819 - 1884 (65 years)
Ezra Abbot was an American biblical scholar. Life and writings Abbot was born at Jackson, Maine, April 28, 1819; son of Ezra and Phebe Abbot. He was educated at Phillips Exeter Academy and graduated from Bowdoin College in 1840. In 1847, at the request of Andrews Norton, he went to Cambridge, Massachusetts where he was principal of a public school until 1856. He was assistant librarian of Harvard University from 1856 to 1872, and planned and perfected an alphabetical card catalog, combining many of the advantages of the ordinary dictionary catalogs with the grouping of the minor topics under more general heads, which is characteristic of a systematic catalogue.
Go to Profile#2799
John of Nepomuk
1340 - 1393 (53 years)
John of Nepomuk was the saint of Bohemia who was drowned in the Vltava river at the behest of King Wenceslaus IV of Bohemia. Later accounts state that he was the confessor of the queen of Bohemia and refused to divulge the secrets of the confessional. On the basis of this account, John of Nepomuk is considered the first martyr of the Seal of the Confessional, a patron against calumnies and, because of the manner of his death, a protector from floods and drowning.
Go to Profile#2800
Bernard Revel
1885 - 1940 (55 years)
Bernard Revel was an Orthodox rabbi and scholar. He served as the first President of Yeshiva College from 1915 until his death in 1940. The Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies at Yeshiva University, as well as the former Yeshiva Dov Revel of Forest Hills, are named after him.
Go to Profile