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,
#3451
Karl Ullmann
1796 - 1865 (69 years)
Carl Christian Ullmann was a German Calvinist theologian. Biography He studied at Heidelberg and Tübingen, and in 1820 delivered exegetical and historical lectures at Heidelberg. He received a professorship at Heidelberg from 1821 to 1829. In 1829 he went to Halle upon Saale as professor to teach church history, dogmatics and symbolics, but in 1836 he returned to a chair at Heidelberg, where he taught until 1856. Between 1853 and 1861 he officiated as prelate, i.e. spiritual leader, of the United Evangelical Protestant State Church of Baden .
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Isaac Penington
1616 - 1679 (63 years)
Isaac Penington was one of the early members of the Religious Society of Friends in England. He wrote about the Quaker movement and was an influential promoter and defender of it. Penington was the oldest son of Isaac Penington, a Puritan who had served as the Lord Mayor of London. Penington married a widow named Mary Springett and they had five children. Penington's stepdaughter Gulielma Springett married William Penn. Convinced that the Quaker faith was true, Penington and his wife joined the Friends in 1657 or 1658.
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Eadmer
1060 - 1120 (60 years)
Eadmer or Edmer was an English historian, theologian, and ecclesiastic. He is known for being a contemporary biographer of his archbishop and companion, Saint Anselm, in his Vita Anselmi, and for his Historia novorum in Anglia, which presents the public face of Anselm. Eadmer's history is written to support the primacy of Canterbury over York, a central concern for Anselm.
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Johann Benedict Carpzov II
1639 - 1699 (60 years)
Johann Benedict Carpzov II was a German Christian theologian and Hebraist. He was a member of the scholarly Carpzov family. He studied Hebrew under Johannes Buxtorf II, in Basel. He was appointed professor of Oriental languages at Leipzig in 1668, and was pastor of St. Thomas' 1679-99, and professor of theology 1684-99.
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John Brande Morris
1812 - 1880 (68 years)
John Brande Morris, known to friends as Jack Morris was an English Anglican theologian, later a Roman Catholic priest. He was a noted academic eccentric, but an important scholar of Syriac. Life He studied at Balliol College, Oxford, graduating in 1834 and 1837 . He was then elected Petrean Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford, lecturing on Hebrew and Syriac.
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Ambrosius Blarer
1492 - 1564 (72 years)
Ambrosius Blarer was an influential Protestant reformer in southern Germany and north-eastern Switzerland. Early life Ambrosius Blarer was born 1492 into a leading family of Konstanz. He studied theology in Tübingen where he met Philip Melanchthon with whom he kept a lifelong friendship. After getting his master‘s degree, he entered the Benedictine monastery Alpirsbach Abbey.
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Richard Wilhelm
1873 - 1930 (57 years)
Richard Wilhelm was a German sinologist, theologian and missionary. He lived in China for 25 years, became fluent in spoken and written Chinese, and grew to love and admire the Chinese people. He is best remembered for his translations of philosophical works from Chinese into German that in turn have been translated into other major languages of the world, including English. His translation of the I Ching is still regarded as one of the finest, as is his translation of The Secret of the Golden Flower; both were provided with introductions by the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, who was a persona...
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John Baconthorpe
1290 - 1347 (57 years)
John Baconthorpe, OCarm was a learned English Carmelite friar and scholastic philosopher. Life John Baconthorpe was born at Baconsthorpe, Norfolk, he seems to have been the grandnephew of Roger Bacon . In youth, he joined the Carmelite Order, becoming a friar at Blakeney, near Walsingham. He studied at Oxford and Paris. He became regent master of the theology faculty at Paris by 1323. He is believed to have taught theology at Cambridge and Oxford. Eventually, he became known as doctor resolutus, though the implication of this is unclear.
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Theodor Gangauf
1809 - 1875 (66 years)
Theodor Gangauf was a German Catholic theologian born in Bergen, Bavaria. He received his ordination in 1833, and in 1836 joined the Benedictine Order in Augsburg. From 1841 until his death in 1875 he was a professor of philosophy at the Lyceum at Augsburg. In the meantime , he also served as abbot at St. Stephen's Abbey.
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Johan Robeck
1672 - 1735 (63 years)
Johan Robeck was a Swedish-German theologian and philosopher who justified and committed suicide. Life Robeck was born in Kalmar, Sweden, and raised in the reformed religion. He studied in Uppsala, before going to Hildesheim in Germany, where he converted to Catholicism in 1704. He joined the Jesuits and lived in Rinteln, Westphalia.
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Aegidius Hunnius
1550 - 1603 (53 years)
Aegidius Hunnius the Elder was a Lutheran theologian of the Lutheran scholastic tradition and father of Nicolaus Hunnius. Life Hunnius went rapidly through the preparatory schools of Württemberg, and studied from 1565 to 1574 at Tübingen. In 1576 Jacob Heerbrand recommended him as professor to the University of Marburg, where Hunnius exerted himself to do away with all compromises and restore Lutheran orthodoxy. He gained many adherents, and the consequence was a split in the State Church of Hesse which finally led to the separation of Upper and Lower Hesse. The cardinal point of all controversies was the doctrine of ubiquity which Hunnius maintained in his writing De persona Christi.
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V. A. Demant
1893 - 1983 (90 years)
Vigo Auguste Demant , known as V. A. Demant, was an English Anglican priest, theologian, and social commentator. He was one of the 14 committee members who served on the Wolfenden Report on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution.
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Izidor Guzmics
1786 - 1839 (53 years)
Izidor Guzmics , Hungarian theologian, was born at Vámos-Család in the county of Sopron. At Sopron he was instructed in the art of poetry by Pál Horváth. In October 1805 he entered the Benedictine order, but left it in August of the following year only again to assume the monastic garb on November 10, 1806. At the monastery of Pannonhalma he applied himself to the study of Greek under Farkas Tóth and in 1812 he was sent to Pest to study theology.
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Johannes Bogerman
1576 - 1637 (61 years)
Johannes Bogerman was a Frisian Protestant divine. He was born in Upleward , the son of a preacher. From 1591 onwards, he studied in Franeker, Heidelberg, Geneva, Zürich, Lausanne, Oxford and Cambridge. In 1599, he became pastor in Sneek, 1603 in Enkhuizen and 1604 in Leeuwarden. In 1636, he became professor for theology in Franeker.
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Benjamin Elbel
1690 - 1756 (66 years)
Benjamin Elbel was a German Franciscan moral theologian. Elbel was born at Friedberg, Bavaria. He belonged to the Strasburg Franciscan province, was lector of theology, and held high positions in the order. He died at Söflingen.
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John Theophilus Desaguliers
1683 - 1744 (61 years)
John Theophilus Desaguliers FRS was a British natural philosopher, clergyman, engineer and freemason who was elected to the Royal Society in 1714 as experimental assistant to Isaac Newton. He had studied at Oxford and later popularized Newtonian theories and their practical applications in public lectures. Desaguliers's most important patron was James Brydges, 1st Duke of Chandos. As a Freemason, Desaguliers was instrumental in the success of the first Grand Lodge in London in the early 1720s and served as its third Grand Master.
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Richard Baumann
1899 - 1997 (98 years)
Richard Baumann was a German theologian and writer. Biography Baumann was born in Stuttgart, Germany. After studying Protestant theology at Tübingen and Marburg since 1922, Baumann was pastor of the Evangelical-Lutheran Church in Württemberg. Because of his Bible study and under the influence of Kirchenkampf during the Third Reich as well as intensive contact to Catholic Christians especially during the Second World War, he came in 1941 to the conclusion that after the Gospel of Matthew 16.18 and Gospel of John from 21.15 to 17 Jesus said Simon Peter was transmitted order to be understood as a continuing until the end of time office, which in the Roman Pope was realized.
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Wilhelm Vischer
1895 - 1988 (93 years)
Wilhelm Eduard Vischer was a Swiss pastor, theologian, Hebraist, Old Testament scholar and amateur Lied lyricist. One of his major areas of study was that of Christ in the Old Testament. From 1934 he was pastor of the German-speaking evangelical church in Lugano. In the same year he published the first volume of Das Christuszeugnis des Alten Testaments on the Pentateuch. In 1942 the second volume on the early prophets and Joshua to Kings. He was a pastor in Basel until 1947 when he moved to become professor of Old Testament in Montpellier.
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Johannes du Plessis
1868 - 1935 (67 years)
Johannes du Plessis was a South African theologian and Protestant missionary. Du Plessis is perhaps most remembered for helping lead an interracial coalition to push for reforms to empower black South Africans and lessen government discrimination in the early 1920s, such as by limiting the pass laws. He was ordained by the Dutch Reformed Church of South Africa, although relations between him and the DRC declined in his later life over his liberal and modernist theological views, culminating in an accusation of heresy and his dismissal as professor at the University of Stellenbosch.
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Casimir Ubaghs
1800 - 1875 (75 years)
Gérard Casimir Ubaghs was a Dutch Catholic philosopher and theologian. For about 30 years he was the chief formulator and promoter of a type of philosophical theology known as "traditionalist ontologism." Many of Ubaghs' doctrines were modifications of forms of traditionalism and ontologism that were already current in the 19th- and previous centuries. Ubaghs and some of his followers taught primarily at the Catholic University of Louvain, where a school of philosophical theology based on his teachings came into being. This school of philosophical theology is referred to, variously, as the ...
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Edwin Hatch
1835 - 1889 (54 years)
Edwin Warren Hatch was an English theologian. He is best known as the author of the book Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages Upon the Christian Church, which was based on his 1888 Hibbert Lectures and which were edited and published following his death. He is also remembered as the composer of the hymn "Breathe on Me, Breath of God."
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Ludwig Hirzel
1801 - 1841 (40 years)
Ludwig Hirzel was a Swiss theologian born in Zürich. His son, also named Ludwig Hirzel , was a noted literary historian. Hirzel studied theology at the Carolinum in Zürich then continued his education in Germany, where he focused on Old Testament studies and Oriental languages. In 1823 he returned to Zürich, where he taught classes on Hebrew language and theology at the Carolinum. In 1833 he became an associate professor of theology at the newly established University of Zürich.
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Emilius Seghers
1855 - 1927 (72 years)
Emilius Seghers was the 25th bishop of Ghent in Belgium. Life Seghers was born in Ghent on 3 September 1855, the son of a lawyer. He studied at the Jesuit secondary school in Ghent and the minor seminary. In 1874 he entered the Major Seminary of Ghent for three years of Theology, which he followed with another three years at the Catholic University of Leuven, graduating Licentiate of Sacred Theology in 1880.
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Aleksandr Glagolev
1872 - 1937 (65 years)
Alexander Alexandrovich Glagolev was a Russian Orthodox priest and religious philosopher as well as professor of the Kiev Theological Seminary. Biography Alexander Glagolev was born to a priestly family. He graduated from the Tula theological seminary and the Kiev theological seminary with a doctoral degree in theology. His thesis was called "Angels in the Old Testament". In the review of his thesis, professor Olesnitsky noted that: "Glagolev's dissertation has both breadth and depth of research covering all points in the Old Testament angelology... and should be considered a real contribut...
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Oscar von Gebhardt
1844 - 1906 (62 years)
Oscar Leopold von Gebhardt was a German Lutheran theologian, born in the Baltic German settlement of Wesenberg in the Russian Empire . He studied theology at Dorpat and at several other German universities, and afterwards worked in university libraries at Strasbourg, Leipzig, Halle and Göttingen. In 1891 he became director of the publication department at the Royal Library at Berlin, and in 1893 became chief librarian and professor of paleography at the University of Leipzig.
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Gavrilo Stefanović Venclović
1680 - 1749 (69 years)
Gavrilo "Gavril" Stefanović Venclović was a priest, writer, poet, orator, philosopher, neologist, polyglot, and illuminator. He was one of the first and most notable representatives of Serbian Baroque literature . Venclović's most important contributions as a scholar was in the development of the vernacular in what would a century later become the Serbian literary language. He is also remembered as one of the first Serbian enlighteners, student of Kiprijan Račanin.
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Alfred Cauchie
1860 - 1922 (62 years)
Alfred Cauchie was a professor of history at the Catholic University of Leuven. Life Cauchie was born in Haulchin, Hainaut, on 26 October 1860, and was educated at the minor seminary of Bonne-Espérance in Estinnes. In 1882 he entered the major seminary, receiving priestly ordination from Isidore-Joseph du Rousseaux, bishop of Tournai, on 25 October 1885. After ordination he was sent to the Catholic University of Leuven to pursue studies in History, graduating licentiate in 1888. His bishop then sent him to Rome in 1888-1889, where he worked in the Vatican Secret Archives, which had been opened to researchers by Pope Leo XIII in 1879.
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Bela Bates Edwards
1802 - 1852 (50 years)
Bela Bates Edwards was an American man of letters. Biography Edwards was born at Southampton, Massachusetts, on 4 July 1802. He graduated at Amherst College in 1824, was a tutor there from 1827 to 1828, graduated at Andover Theological Seminary in 1830, and was licensed to preach. From 1828 to 1833 he was assistant Secretary of the American Education Society , and from 1828 to 1842 was editor of the society's newsletter, which after 1831 was called the American Quarterly Register.
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Herman Herbers
1540 - 1607 (67 years)
Herman Herbers was a Dutch pastor and theologian. Biography Herbers was born in Groenlo in 1540 or 1544 as the son of Roman Catholic parents. He was educated in a monastery. He joined the Mariengarden Monastery of the order of the Cistercians in Gross-Burlo, near Winterswijk.
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Paul Rusch
1897 - 1979 (82 years)
Paul Frederick Rusch was a lay missionary of the Anglican Church in Japan. Rusch is remembered in Japan for his role as an educator and for pioneering activities in development of American football, rural agriculture and post Second World War reconciliation.
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Emil Frommel
1828 - 1896 (68 years)
Emil Frommel was a German pastor and author, born at Karlsruhe. He studied at Halle upon Saale, Erlangen, and Heidelberg, held several pastorates, served as army chaplain in the Franco-German War of 1870–1871 and in 1872 was appointed court preacher at Berlin and pastor of the garrison in that city.
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Julius Schniewind
1883 - 1948 (65 years)
Julius Schniewind was a German evangelical theologian. He came to prominence in the 1930s as a leader of the Confessing Church , which can be seen as a movement within German Protestantism that arose during the Nazi years in opposition to government-sponsored efforts to unify all Protestant churches into a single pro-Nazi Protestant Reich Church.
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Andrea Gallandi
1709 - 1779 (70 years)
Andrea Gallandi was an Italian Oratorian and patristic scholar. Life He pursued his theological and historical studies under two Dominicanss, Daniello Concina, a moralist, and Bernardo de Rossi , a noted historical scholar and theologian. With both of these instructors he kept up a friendship after he had joined the Oratory of St. Philip Neri.
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Daniel Whitby
1638 - 1726 (88 years)
Daniel Whitby was a controversial English theologian and biblical commentator. An Arminian priest in the Church of England, Whitby was known as strongly anti-Calvinistic and later gave evidence of Unitarian tendencies.
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Peter du Moulin
1601 - 1684 (83 years)
Peter du Moulin was a French-English Anglican clergyman, son of the Huguenot pastor Pierre du Moulin and brother of Lewis du Moulin. He was the anonymous author of Regii sanguinis clamor ad coelum adversus paricidas Anglicanos, published at The Hague in 1652, a royalist work defending Salmasius and including a strong attack on John Milton.
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Hermann Schultz
1836 - 1903 (67 years)
Hermann Schultz , German Protestant theologian, was born at Lüchow in Hanover . Education He studied at Göttingen and Erlangen, became professor at Basel in 1864, and eventually professor ordinarius at Göttingen. Here he also held the appointments of chief university preacher, councillor to the State Consistory of the Church of Hanover and abbot of Bursfelde .
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Johann Jacob Zimmermann
1644 - 1693 (49 years)
Johann Jacob Zimmermann was a German nonconformist theologian, millenarian, mathematician, and astronomer. Life Zimmermann was born in Vaihingen, Württemberg on November 25, 1642. He lived in Nürtingen, and studied theology at the University of Tübingen, where he was awarded the title Magister in 1664. An astronomer and astrologer, Zimmermann produced one of the first Equidistant Conic Projection star charts of the northern hemisphere in 1692. While at University, he also was a singing instructor.
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Kathleen Bliss
1908 - 1989 (81 years)
Kathleen Mary Amelia Bliss was an English theologian, missionary and official of the World Council of Churches . Early life Bliss was born in Fulham. She attended Girton College, Cambridge, graduating in theology and history . While at university, she participated in the Student Volunteer Movement.
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Jacob Vernet
1698 - 1789 (91 years)
Jacob Vernet was a prominent theologian in Geneva, Republic of Geneva, who believed in a rationalist approach to religion. He was called "the most important and influential Genevan pastor of his day".
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Jakob Andreae
1528 - 1590 (62 years)
Jakob Andreae was a significant German Lutheran theologian and Protestant Reformer involved in the drafting of major documents. Life He was born in Waiblingen, in the Duchy of Württemberg. He studied at the University of Tübingen from 1541. He attended the diets of Regensburg and Augsburg , became professor of theology in the University of Tübingen , and provost of the church of St. George. He was active in Protestant discussions and movements, particularly in the adoption of a common declaration of faith by the two parties.
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John Williams
1796 - 1839 (43 years)
John Williams was an English missionary, active in the South Pacific. Early life He was born in Tottenham, near London, to Welsh parents. In 1810 the family moved to north London and there he served as a clerk to an iron foundry. He also took some interest in smithing. There his employer's wife first took him to church and he was immediately drawn to this, and the pastor, Rev Nathan Wilks, enrolled him in a class to prepare for the ministry. However, his heart quickly became set on missionary work.
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François de Pâris
1690 - 1727 (37 years)
François de Pâris was a French Catholic deacon and theologian, a supporter of Jansenism. He became deacon of the Oratory of St. Magloire and was noted for his critique of the papal bull Unigenitus, which condemned Pasquier Quesnel's annotated translation of the Bible. He gave his earnings to the poor, and in his retirement he lived in a state of extreme poverty. After his death, his place of burial gained a reputation for supernatural events and the basis of the Convulsionnaires of Saint-Médard where he is buried. In 1731 there was a movement by the Jansenists to canonize François de Pâris as...
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Nicholas Eymerich
1320 - 1399 (79 years)
Nicholas Eymerich was a Roman Catholic theologian in Medieval Catalonia and Inquisitor General of the Inquisition in the Crown of Aragon in the later half of the 14th century. He is best known for authoring the Directorium Inquisitorum, that mostly summarized previous texts and mores.
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Adolf Wuttke
1819 - 1870 (51 years)
Karl Friedrich Adolf Wuttke was a German Protestant theologian. Biography He was born in Breslau . He studied theology at Breslau, Berlin and Halle, where he eventually became professor ordinarius. Works He is known as the author of a treatise on Christian ethics and works on heathen religion and superstition .
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Matthieu Ory
1492 - 1557 (65 years)
Matthieu Ory was a French Dominican theologian and Inquisitor. Life Entering the Dominican Order at the age of eighteen, he studied in the convent of St-Jacques, Paris, and at the Sorbonne, obtaining the licentiate in theology, 6 February 1527. His reputation for learning and eloquence led to his appointment as grand inquisitor for France , an office which he held until his death.
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Hermann Mandel
1882 - 1946 (64 years)
Hermann Mandel , born Johann Hermann Mandel, was a German theologian who served as Professor of Theology at the University of Kiel Biography Hermann Mandel was born in Holzwickede, Germany on 13 December 1882. His father, Heinrich Mandel, was a teacher and later the head of an orphanage. Mandel gained his abitur from in 1901, and subsequently studied theology at the universities of Halle, Königsberg, Bonn and Greifswald. At Greifswald his teacher was Carl Stange. Mandel received his Ph.D. and completed his habilitation at Greifswald, and in 1911 he was appointed a professor there.
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Jens Matthias Pram Kaurin
1804 - 1863 (59 years)
Jens Matthias Pram Kaurin was a Norwegian professor of theology, biblical translator, and Lutheran priest. He served as the Bishop of the Diocese of Bjørgvin from 1858 until 1861. Life and family Jens Kaurin was born in Laurdal in Telemark county, Norway. He studied theology at Christiania University and graduated with a Cand.theol. degree in 1826. On 22 December 1827, he married Petronelle Louise Hanna Thomasine Magelssen, and together, they had six children: Eiler Rosenvinge, Anne Marie, Christian, Wilhelm Andreas, Edvard, and Susanna Kristence Pram.
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Edward Michelis
1813 - 1855 (42 years)
Edward Michelis was a German Roman Catholic theologian. Life After his ordination, in 1836, he was appointed private secretary to Clemens August von Droste-Vischering, Archbishop of Cologne, whose imprisonment he shared, first in the fortress of Minden , and later at Magdeburg and Erfurt. On his release in 1841 he returned to St. Mauritz, where, the following year, he established the Sisters of Divine Providence, whom he placed in charge of an orphanage he had also founded.
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Johan Joseph Faict
1813 - 1894 (81 years)
Jean-Joseph Faict was the 20th Bishop of Bruges. Life Early years Faict was born in the coastal village of Leffinge at the time when the whole of West Flanders was part of the French empire. His father was a brewer . He studied at the Minor Seminary, Roeselare and then at the Major Seminary, Bruges , before progressing to the Catholic University of Leuven.
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Caspar Aquila
1488 - 1560 (72 years)
Caspar Aquila , born Johann Kaspar Adler, was a German Lutheran theologian and reformer. Biography He was born at Augsburg, and educated there, at Ulm , in Italy , at Bern , and studied theology in Leipzig and Wittenberg . According to his son, he entered the ministry in August 1514, while at Bern. He was for some time a military chaplain.
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