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,
#3101
Alexander Men
1935 - 1990 (55 years)
Alexander Vladimirovich Men was a Soviet Russian Orthodox priest, dissident, theologian, biblical scholar and writer on theology, Christian history and other religions. Men wrote dozens of books ; baptized hundreds if not thousands; founded an Orthodox open university; opened one of the first Sunday schools in Russia as well as a charity group at the Russian Children's Hospital. His influence is still widely felt and his legacy continues to grow among Christians both in Russia and abroad. He was murdered early on a Sunday morning, on 9 September 1990, by an ax-wielding assailant outside his h...
Go to Profile#3102
Firmin Abauzit
1679 - 1767 (88 years)
Firmin Abauzit was a French scholar who worked on physics, theology and philosophy, and served as librarian in Geneva during his final 40 years. Abauzit is also notable for proofreading or correcting the writings of Isaac Newton and other scholars.
Go to Profile#3103
Camilo Torres Restrepo
1929 - 1966 (37 years)
Camilo Torres Restrepo was a Colombian Marxist–Leninist, Roman Catholic priest, a proponent of liberation theology, and a member of the National Liberation Army . During his life, he tried to reconcile revolutionary Marxism and Catholicism. His social activism and willingness to work with Marxists troubled some.
Go to Profile#3104
Franz Peter Knoodt
1811 - 1889 (78 years)
Franz Peter Knoodt was a German Catholic theologian who was a native of Boppard. He studied theology in Bonn und Tübingen, and later worked as a chaplain and teacher in Trier. In 1841-43 he furthered his studies in Vienna, where he was a student of Anton Günther . In 1844 he earned his doctorate of theology at Breslau, and in 1845 became a professor of philosophy at the Catholic faculty of theology at the University of Bonn. From May 1848 to February 1849 he was a member of the Frankfurt National Assembly.
Go to Profile#3105
Giovanni Maria Tolosani
1471 - 1549 (78 years)
Giovanni Maria Tolosani was an Italian theologian, writer, a prior of the Dominican order at the convent of St. Mark in Florence a mathematician and an astronomer. He is best known for writing the first notable denunciation of Copernican heliocentric theory in 1545.
Go to Profile#3106
Martin Thornton
1915 - 1986 (71 years)
Martin Thornton was an English Anglican priest, spiritual director, author and lecturer on ascetical theology. His "theology of the remnant" has been influential in Anglican circles. He was active for much of his life in the Diocese of Truro, England, serving 10 years as the canon chancellor of Truro Cathedral. He died on 22 June 1986 and was buried at the Townsend Cemetery, Crewkerne, South Somerset District, Somerset, England. The epitaph on his tombstone is "The word of God his Rule / The Glory of God his Aim / And to God the Holy Trinity / was all his guiding."
Go to Profile#3107
J. B. Lightfoot
1828 - 1889 (61 years)
Joseph Barber Lightfoot , known as J. B. Lightfoot, was an English theologian and Bishop of Durham. Life Lightfoot was born in Liverpool, where his father John Jackson Lightfoot was an accountant. His mother, Ann Matilda Barber, was from a family of Birmingham artists. He was educated at King Edward's School, Birmingham, under James Prince Lee. His contemporaries included Brooke Foss Westcott and Edward White Benson. In 1847, Lightfoot went to Trinity College, Cambridge, and read for his degree along with Westcott. He graduated senior classic and 30th wrangler, and was elected a fellow of his college.
Go to Profile#3108
Francis Atterbury
1663 - 1732 (69 years)
Francis Atterbury was an English man of letters, politician and bishop. A High Church Tory and Jacobite, he gained patronage under Queen Anne, but was mistrusted by the Hanoverian Whig ministries, and banished for communicating with the Old Pretender in the Atterbury Plot. He was a noted wit and a gifted preacher.
Go to Profile#3109
Theognostus of Alexandria
210 - 270 (60 years)
Theognostus was a late 3rd century Alexandrian theologian. He is known from quotes by Athanasius and Photios I of Constantinople. Philip of Side says that he presided over the school of Alexandria after Pierius . Although a disciple of Origen of Alexandria no reference of him can be found by Eusebius or Jerome. The main textual point of reference is derived from Athanasius.
Go to Profile#3110
Leonhard Hutter
1563 - 1616 (53 years)
Leonhard Hutter was a German Lutheran theologian. Life He was born at Nellingen near Ulm. From 1581 he studied at the universities of Strasbourg, Leipzig, Heidelberg and Jena. In 1594 he began to give theological lectures at Jena, and in 1596 accepted a call as professor of theology at Wittenberg, where he died twenty years later.
Go to Profile#3111
Franz Hildebrandt
1909 - 1985 (76 years)
Franz Hildebrandt was a German-born Lutheran, and later Methodist, pastor and theologian, forced into exile during World War II, and subsequently active in the United Kingdom and the USA. Life Hildebrandt was the son of the art professor Edmund Hildebrandt and his wife Ottilie, née Schlesinger . He studied theology in Berlin, Marburg, and Tübingen . During his time in Berlin, he became a close friend of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. In 1930, he was awarded a licentiate by the University of Berlin; his first book was based on his doctoral dissertation.
Go to Profile#3112
Adam Neuser
1530 - 1576 (46 years)
Adam Neuser was a Protestant pastor of Heidelberg who held Antitrinitarian views. Neuser was born in Gunzenhausen and was a popular pastor and theologian in Heidelberg in the 1560s, serving at the Peterskirche and later the Heiliggeistkirche. During the controversy over church discipline that developed in the late 1560s, Neuser became a leading member of the Antidisciplinist, and thus anti-Calvinist, faction led by Thomas Erastus. His disaffection with the ecclesiastical regime perhaps played some role in his doubts concerning orthodox Christian dogma. He wrote letters sternly attacking the doctrine of the trinity.
Go to Profile#3113
Sebastiaan Tromp
1889 - 1975 (86 years)
Sebastiaan Peter Cornelis Tromp was a Dutch Jesuit priest, theologian, and Latinist, who is best known for assisting Pope Pius XII in his theological encyclicals, and Pope John XXIII in the preparation for Vatican II. He was an assistant to Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani during the Council and professor of Catholic theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University from 1929 until 1967.
Go to Profile#3114
Wilhelmus à Brakel
1635 - 1711 (76 years)
Wilhelmus à Brakel , also known as "Father Brakel", was a Reformed minister and theologian in the Netherlands. He was a contemporary of Gisbertus Voetius and Hermann Witsius and a major representative of the Dutch Further Reformation .
Go to Profile#3115
Johann Joachim Spalding
1714 - 1804 (90 years)
Johann Joachim Spalding was a German Protestant theologian and philosopher of Scottish ancestry who was a native of Tribsees, Swedish Pomerania. He was the father of Georg Ludwig Spalding , a professor at Grauen Kloster in Berlin.
Go to Profile#3116
Kornelis Heiko Miskotte
1894 - 1976 (82 years)
Kornelis Heiko Miskotte was a Dutch Protestant theologian and a representative of dialectical theology. Life Miskotte was born to a conservative Reformed Protestant family in the Netherlands. After attending Christian high school, he studied theology in his home city of Utrecht from 1914 to 1920. Theologically, he came under influence of the ethical theology of Johannes Hermanus Gunning, who taught an artful synthesis of modern culture and biblical revelation. Philosophically, Miskotte was also influenced by the Neo-Kantian B.J.H. Ovink.
Go to Profile#3117
Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples
1450 - 1537 (87 years)
Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples was a French theologian and a leading figure in French humanism. He was a precursor of the Protestant movement in France. The "d'Étaples" was not part of his name as such, but used to distinguish him from Jacques Lefèvre of Deventer, a less significant contemporary who was a friend and correspondent of Erasmus. Both are also sometimes called by the German version of their name, Jacob/Jakob Faber. He himself had a sometimes tense relationship with Erasmus, whose work on Biblical translation and in theology closely paralleled his own.
Go to Profile#3118
Isaak August Dorner
1809 - 1884 (75 years)
Isaak August Dorner was a German Lutheran church leader. He was a meditating theologian in nineteenth-century Germany who served as a professor of theology at the University of Berlin and had an international influence.
Go to Profile#3119
Krzysztof Celestyn Mrongovius
1764 - 1855 (91 years)
Krzysztof Celestyn Mrongovius was a Protestant pastor, writer, philosopher, distinguished linguist, and translator. Mrongovius was a noted defender of the Polish language in Warmia and Mazury. Biography Mrongovius, son of Bartholomeus, was born in Hohenstein, Kingdom of Prussia . Mrongovius attended a school in Saalfeld , and then studied at the cathedral school in Königsberg. He matriculated on 21 March 1782 at Königsberg University. During his second semester, he attended Immanuel Kant's metaphysics lectures, followed by theology, logic, anthropology and moral philosophy, and physics.
Go to Profile#3120
Michel de Certeau
1925 - 1986 (61 years)
Michel de Certeau was a French Jesuit priest and scholar whose work combined history, psychoanalysis, philosophy, and the social sciences as well as hermeneutics, semiotics, ethnology, and religion. He was known as a philosopher of everyday life and widely regarded as a historian who had interests ranging from travelogues of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to contemporary urban life.
Go to Profile#3121
Karl Budde
1850 - 1935 (85 years)
Karl Ferdinand Reinhard Budde was a German theologian, born in Bensberg, and a well-known authority on the Old Testament. Biography He studied theology, philosophy and history at the universities of Bonn and Berlin, obtaining his habilitation for Old Testament studies at Bonn in 1873. He was inspector of the Evangelisches Theologisches Stift in Bonn from 1878 to 1885, and in the meantime, became an associate professor of Old Testament theology at the University of Bonn . In 1889 he attained a full professorship at Strassburg, and from 1900 to 1921 served as president of Old Testament theology and exegesis at the University of Marburg.
Go to Profile#3122
William of Rubruck
1220 - 1293 (73 years)
William of Rubruck or Guillaume de Rubrouck was a Flemish Franciscan missionary and explorer. He is best known for his travels to various parts of the Middle East and Central Asia in the 13th century, including the Mongol Empire. His account of his travels is one of the masterpieces of medieval travel literature, comparable to those of Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta.
Go to Profile#3123
Heinrich Vogel
1902 - 1989 (87 years)
Heinrich Vogel was an evangelical theologian, poet of sacred texts and songs and composer of numerous motets and chamber music. He studied theology at the University of Berlin and the University of Jena. In 1927 he became a minister for the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union in Oderberg.
Go to Profile#3124
Jacob Peter Mynster
1775 - 1854 (79 years)
Jacob Peter Mynster was a Danish theologian and clergy member of the Church of Denmark. He served as Bishop of the Diocese of Zealand from 1834 until his death. Mynster was notably used as an exemplar of conservative religion by Søren Kierkegaard in his book Attack Upon Christendom.
Go to Profile#3125
Julius Müller
1801 - 1878 (77 years)
Julius Müller was a German Protestant theologian. Biography He was born at Brieg and studied at Breslau, Göttingen and Berlin – first law, which he later abandoned for theology. From 1825 to 1831, he was in charge of several small parishes. In 1831, he was second university preacher at Göttingen University, and lectured on practical theology and pedagogics. In 1834, he became professor extraordinarius of theology there. From 1835 to 1839 he was professor in Marburg. In 1839 he became professor ordinarius of theology at the University of Halle, where he remained for the rest of his life. He d...
Go to Profile#3126
Wu Leichuan
1870 - 1944 (74 years)
Wu Leichuan was a leading Chinese theologian in the early 20th century and Chancellor of Yenching University. Biography From his childhood, Wu poured his energy into mastering the Confucian classics and working his way up through the imperial examinations, obtaining the level of Jìnshì in 1898 in Beijing after passing the metropolitan and imperial examinations. He converted to Christianity in 1915 and became Yenching University's first Chinese vice-president and chancellor between 1926 and 1934.
Go to Profile#3127
Hans Ehrenberg
1883 - 1958 (75 years)
Hans Philipp Ehrenberg was a German Jewish philosopher and theologian. One of the co-founders of the Confessing Church, he was forced to emigrate to England because of his Jewish ancestry and his opposition to Nazism.
Go to Profile#3128
Filippo Bernardini
1884 - 1954 (70 years)
Filippo Bernardini was an Italian prelate of the Catholic Church. He spent almost his entire career in the diplomatic service of the Holy See and was given the rank of archbishop in 1933. He was Apostolic Delegate to Australia for two years before taking up the position of Apostolic Nuncio to Switzerland where he served from 1935 to 1953. During World War II, he was active in the Catholic resistance to Nazism and provided assistance to Jews during the Nazi Holocaust. He served briefly as Secretary of the Congregation for Propagation of the Faith just before his death. Before entering the dipl...
Go to Profile#3129
Salomo Glassius
1593 - 1656 (63 years)
Salomo Glassius was a German theologian and biblical critic born at Sondershausen, in the principality of Schwarzburg-Sondershausen. In 1612 he entered the University of Jena. In 1615, with the intent of studying law, he moved to Wittenberg. Due to illness, he returned to Jena after a year. Here, as a student of theology under Johann Gerhard, he directed his attention especially to Hebrew and the cognate dialects. In 1619 he was made an adjunctus of the philosophical faculty. He later was appointment as Professor of Hebrew.
Go to Profile#3130
James Moffatt
1870 - 1944 (74 years)
James Moffatt was a Scottish theologian and graduate of the University of Glasgow. Moffatt trained at the Free Church College, Glasgow, and was a practising minister at the United Free Church in Dundonald in the early years of his career. He received the degree Doctor of Divinity from the University of St Andrews in April 1902.
Go to Profile#3131
Al-Shawkani
1759 - 1839 (80 years)
Muḥammad ibn Ali ibn Muḥammad ibn Abd Allah, better known as al-Shawkānī , was a prominent Yemeni Sunni Islamic scholar, jurist, theologian and reformer. Shawkani was one of the most influential proponents of Athari theology and is revered as one of their canonical scholars by Salafi Muslims. His teachings played a major role in the emergence of the Salafi movement. Influenced by the teachings of the medieval Hanbali scholar Ibn Taymiyya, Al-Shawkani became noteworthy for his staunch stances against the practice of Taqlid , calls for direct interpretation of Scriptures, opposition to Kalam as...
Go to Profile#3132
Henri Grenier
1899 - 1980 (81 years)
Henri Grenier was a French Canadian priest, theologian, and philosopher. He was the author of a manual of Thomistic philosophy, once widely used in Roman Catholic seminaries. Life Grenier was born in Gaspé, Quebec, and ordained for the diocese of Gaspé in 1924. He studied philosophy at the Angelicum in Rome , and at the major seminary in Gaspé . From 1927-1930 he studied theology at the Angelicum and Canon law at the Pontifical Lateran University. He held doctorates in philosophy, theology, and canon law. From 1930 to 1947 he was professor of theology at the seminary of Québec. In 1938 he was incardinated in the diocese of Québec.
Go to Profile#3133
Henry Barclay Swete
1835 - 1917 (82 years)
Henry Barclay Swete was an English biblical scholar. He became Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge in 1890. He is known for his 1906 commentary on the Book of Revelation, and other works of exegesis.
Go to Profile#3134
Moses Amyraut
1596 - 1664 (68 years)
Moïse Amyraut, Latin Moyses Amyraldus , in English texts often Moses Amyraut, was a French Huguenot, Reformed theologian and metaphysician. He was the architect of Amyraldism, a Calvinist doctrine that made modifications to Calvinist theology regarding the nature of Christ's atonement and covenant theology.
Go to Profile#3135
Johannes Buxtorf
1564 - 1629 (65 years)
Johannes Buxtorf was a celebrated Hebraist, member of a family of Orientalistss; professor of Hebrew for thirty-nine years at Basel and was known by the title, "Master of the Rabbis". His massive tome, De Synagoga Judaica , scrupulously documents the customs and society of German Jewry in the early modern period.
Go to Profile#3136
Orosius
385 - 418 (33 years)
Paulus Orosius , less often Paul Orosius in English, was a Roman priest, historian and theologian, and a student of Augustine of Hippo. It is possible that he was born in Bracara Augusta , then capital of the Roman province of Gallaecia, which would have been the capital of the Kingdom of the Suebi by his death. Although there are some questions regarding his biography, such as his exact date of birth, it is known that he was a person of some prestige from a cultural point of view, as he had contact with the greatest figures of his time such as Augustine of Hippo and Jerome of Stridon. In orde...
Go to Profile#3137
Nicolaus Hunnius
1585 - 1643 (58 years)
Nicolaus Hunnius was an orthodox Lutheran theologian of the Lutheran scholastic tradition. Hunnius was born at Marburg, the third son of Egidius Hunnius. At the age of fifteen he entered the University of Wittenberg, where he studied philology, philosophy, and theology. In 1609 he joined the philosophical faculty and lectured in philosophy and theology. He followed the same theological direction as his father, inherited his temper and talent as a polemist, and was like him, possessed of great learning. In virtue of his ability Elector John George I. of Saxony appointed him, in 1612, superin...
Go to Profile#3138
Sabato Morais
1823 - 1897 (74 years)
Sabato Morais was an Italian-American rabbi of Portuguese descent, leader of Mikveh Israel Synagogue in Philadelphia, pioneer of Italian Jewish Studies in America, and founder of the Jewish Theological Seminary, which initially acted as a center of education for Orthodox Rabbis.
Go to Profile#3139
Martin Kähler
1835 - 1912 (77 years)
Martin Kähler was a German theologian. He is best known for his short work, published in 1892, Der sogenannte historische Jesus und der geschichtliche, biblische Christus . Kähler was born in Neuhausen near Königsberg and died in Freudenstadt. He had a profound impact upon the famous Protestant theologian, Paul Tillich.
Go to Profile#3140
Clarence Bouma
1891 - 1962 (71 years)
Clarence Bouma was a theologian and professor at Calvin Theological Seminary. Early life and education Bouma was born Klaas Bouma in the Netherlands in 1891 as the son of Doeke Bouma and Trijntje de Jong. The family immigrated to the United States in May 1905. He earned his A.B. at Calvin College, and his B.D. at Princeton Seminary, where he was awarded the Gelston-Winthrop Fellowship in Apologetics. He went on to earn his A.M. from Princeton University, and his Th.D. from Harvard Divinity School.
Go to Profile#3141
Johann Hülsemann
1602 - 1661 (59 years)
Johann Hülsemann was a German Lutheran theologian. He is known as one of the most prominent Lutheran scholastic opponents of Georgius Calixtus in the Syncretistic Controversy. Biography Early life and education Hülsemann was born at Esens, 65 m. n.w. of Bremen in East Frisia, 4 December 1602. He was educated at Norden, Stade, and Hanover. Before he had reached the age of eighteen, he went to the University of Rostock, and two years later to Wittenberg. He also studied briefly at Marburg.
Go to Profile#3142
Albert Kalthoff
1850 - 1906 (56 years)
Albert Kalthoff was a German Protestant theologian, who along with Emil Felden , Oscar Mauritz , Moritz Schwalb and Friedrich Steudel formed a group in Bremen, named the Deutscher Monistenbund , who no longer believed in Jesus as a historical figure.
Go to Profile#3143
Heinrich Müller
1631 - 1675 (44 years)
Heinrich Müller was a German devotional author, Protestant writer of hymns, a Lutheran minister and theologian and a professor at the University of Rostock from 1647 to 1650. He famously denounced the font, the pulpit, the confessional, and the altar as "the four dumb idols of the Lutheran Church". He died in Rostock, aged 43.
Go to Profile#3144
Johann Friedrich König
1619 - 1664 (45 years)
Johann Friedrich König was a German Lutheran theologian, born in Dresden. From 1656 he was a professor at the university of Rostock. He died in Rostock, aged 44.
Go to Profile#3145
Jan Hendrik Scholten
1811 - 1885 (74 years)
Jan Hendrik Scholten , Dutch Protestant theologian, was born at Vleuten near Utrecht. Biography After studying at Utrecht University, he was appointed professor of theology in 1840 at Franeker. From Franeker in 1843 he went to Leiden as professor extraordinarius, and in 1845 was promoted to the rank of ordinarius. Through Scholten, Abraham Kuenen became interested in theology; Scholten was not then the radical theologian he became later. The two scholars in course of time created a movement resembling that of the Tübingen School in Germany. From his theology there "began to rise a different ty...
Go to Profile#3146
Domingo Báñez
1528 - 1604 (76 years)
Domingo Báñez was a Spanish Dominican and Scholastic theologian. The qualifying Mondragonensis sometimes attached to his name seems to refer to the birthplace of his father, Juan Báñez, at Mondragón in Guipúzcoa.
Go to Profile#3147
Alban Stolz
1808 - 1883 (75 years)
Alban Isidor Stolz was a German Roman Catholic theologian and popular author. Life Stolz was born at Bühl, Baden. He first studied at the gymnasium at Rastatt , and then proceeded to the University of Freiburg. After attending lectures in jurisprudence for a brief period, he devoted himself to the study of theology . He fell into scepticism; but after studying philology at the University of Heidelberg from 1830 to 1832 he regained his former Catholic faith.
Go to Profile#3148
Milton Steinberg
1903 - 1950 (47 years)
Milton Steinberg was an American rabbi, philosopher, theologian and author. Life Born in Rochester, New York, he was raised with the combination of his grandparents' traditional Jewish piety and his father's modernist socialism. He graduated as valedictorian of his class at DeWitt Clinton High School and then majored in Classics at City College of New York which he graduated from summa cum laude in 1924. Steinberg received his doctorate in philosophy from Columbia University in 1928 and then entered the Jewish Theological Seminary of America where he was ordained. In seminary, he was strongly...
Go to Profile#3149
Louis Segond
1810 - 1885 (75 years)
Louis Segond was a Swiss theologian who translated the Bible into French from the original texts in Hebrew and Greek. He was born in Plainpalais, near Geneva. After studying theology in Geneva, Strasbourg and Bonn, he was pastor of the Geneva National Church in Chêne-Bougeries, then from 1872, Professor of Old Testament in Geneva.
Go to Profile#3150
Geert Groote
1340 - 1384 (44 years)
Gerard Groote , otherwise Gerrit or Gerhard Groet, in Latin Gerardus Magnus, was a Dutch Catholic deacon, who was a popular preacher and the founder of the Brethren of the Common Life. He was a key figure in the Devotio Moderna movement.
Go to Profile