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,
#3751
Joseph Solomon Delmedigo
1591 - 1655 (64 years)
Joseph Solomon Delmedigo , also known as Yashar Mi-Qandia , was a rabbi, author, physician, mathematician, and music theorist. Born in Candia, Crete, a descendant of Elia del Medigo, he moved to Padua, Italy, studying medicine and taking classes with Galileo in astronomy. After graduating in 1613 he moved to Venice and spent a year in the company of Leon de Modena and Simone Luzzatto. From Venice he went back to Candia and from there started traveling in the near East, reaching Alexandria and Cairo. There he went into a public contest in mathematics against a local mathematician. From Egypt he moved to Istanbul, there he observed the comet of 1619.
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Robert Lowth
1710 - 1787 (77 years)
Robert Lowth was a Bishop of the Church of England, Oxford Professor of Poetry and the author of one of the most influential textbooks of English grammar. Life Lowth was born in Hampshire, England, Great Britain, the son of Dr William Lowth, a clergyman and Biblical commentator. He was educated at Winchester College and became a scholar of New College, Oxford in 1729. Lowth obtained his BA in 1733 and his Master of Arts degree in 1737. In 1735, while still at Oxford, Lowth took orders in the Anglican Church and was appointed vicar of Ovington, Hampshire, a position he retained until 1741, w...
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Heinrich Philipp Konrad Henke
1752 - 1809 (57 years)
Heinrich Philipp Konrad Henke , German theologian, best known as a writer on church history, was born at Hehlen, Brunswick-Lüneburg. He was the father of historian Ernst Ludwig Theodor Henke . He received his education at the gymnasium in Braunschweig and at the University of Helmstedt. Until 1809, he was associated with the University of Helmstedt, named as an associate professor of philosophy in 1777 and of theology the following year. In 1780, he was chosen as a full professor of theology. During his tenure at Helmstedt, he was appointed abbot of Michaelstein Abbey and vice-president of th...
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Alois Emanuel Biedermann
1819 - 1885 (66 years)
Alois Emanuel Biedermann was a Swiss Protestant theologian. He was a prominent dogmatician of the so-called "Young Hegelian" school of thought, and an important advocate of "free Christianity" in Switzerland.
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W. W. Prescott
1855 - 1944 (89 years)
William Warren Prescott was an administrator, educator, and scholar in the early Seventh-day Adventist Church. Biography Prescott's parents were part of the Millerite movement. W. W. Prescott graduated from Dartmouth College in 1877 and served as principal of high schools in Vermont, and published and edited newspapers in Maine and Vermont prior to accepting the presidency of Battle Creek College . While still president of Battle Creek College he helped found Union College and became its first president in 1891. In 1892 he assumed the presidency of the newly founded Walla Walla College in Washington.
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Joseph Rickaby
1845 - 1932 (87 years)
Joseph John Rickaby, SJ was an English Jesuit priest and philosopher. Life Rickaby was born in 1845 in Everingham, York. He received his education at Stonyhurst College, and was ordained in 1877, one of the so-called Stonyhurst Philosophers, along with Richard F. Clarke, Herbert Lucas, and his own brother, John Rickaby. a significant group for neo-scholasticism in England. At the time he was at St Beuno's, he was on friendly terms with Gerard Manley Hopkins; they were ordained on the same day.
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Immanuel Tremellius
1510 - 1580 (70 years)
Immanuel Tremellius was an Italian Jewish convert to Christianity. He was known as a leading Hebraist and Bible translator. Life He was born at Ferrara and educated at the University of Padua. He was converted about 1540 to the Catholic faith through Cardinal Pole but embraced Protestantism in the following year, before going to Strasbourg to teach Hebrew.
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Leonardus Lessius
1554 - 1623 (69 years)
Leonardus Lessius was a Flemish moral theologian from the Jesuit order. Life At the age of thirteen the young Leonard won the Brecht scholarship to the University of Leuven. This university is the main place he will be identified with for the next fifty years. In 1567 he matriculated in an arts department called Le Porc , during the final oral exam he was merited the title of primus. He joined the Jesuits in 1572, and after theological studies in Rome under Francisco Suarez and Robert Bellarmine, he became professor of theology at the University of Leuven. In his early teaching years, he was involved in the predestination theological debate that was raging in Leuven in 1587–88 .
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Karl Fezer
1891 - 1960 (69 years)
Karl Fezer , was a German Lutheran theologian. Biography After his training Fezer was initially a curate in Leinfelden-Echterdingen, then head pastor in Stuttgart and Tübingen. From 1926 to 1959 he was the Professor for Practical Theology at the University of Tübingen. He was Chair of the Protestant Seminary there from 1931 to 1959 while simultaneously Rector of the University from 1933 to 1959. For a short time he was the head of the German Christians movement which sought to institute Nazi racial policies in the German Protestant Church. He petitioned for membership in the Nazi Party in May 1933.
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Gerald of Wales
1146 - 1220 (74 years)
Gerald of Wales was a Cambro-Norman priest and historian. As a royal clerk to the king and two archbishops, he travelled widely and wrote extensively. He studied and taught in France and visited Rome several times, meeting the Pope. He was nominated for several bishoprics but turned them down in the hope of becoming Bishop of St Davids, but was unsuccessful despite considerable support. His final post was as Archdeacon of Brecon, from which he retired to academic study for the remainder of his life. Much of his writing survives.
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Dominic Barberi
1792 - 1849 (57 years)
Dominic Barberi, CP was an Italian theologian and Passionist priest who was prominent in spreading Catholicism in England. He contributed to the conversion of John Henry Newman. In 1963, he was beatified by Pope Paul VI.
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Samuel Rutherford
1600 - 1661 (61 years)
Samuel Rutherford was a Scottish Presbyterian pastor and theologian and one of the Scottish Commissioners to the Westminster Assembly. Life Samuel Rutherford was born in the parish of Nisbet , Roxburghshire, in the Scottish Borders, about 1600. Nothing certain is known as to his parentage, but he belonged to the same line as the Roxburghs of Hunthill and his father is believed to have been a farmer or miller. A brother was school-master of Kirkcudbright, and was a Bible Reader there, and another brother was an officer in the Dutch army.
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William Park Armstrong
1874 - 1944 (70 years)
William Park Armstrong was a theologian and New Testament scholar who is best known for his work at Princeton Theological Seminary. Biography William Park Armstrong was born in Selma, Alabama, the son of William Park and Alice Armstrong and studied at Princeton University, earning his bachelor's degree at the age of 20. He would later earn his M.A. from Princeton and a B.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary before studying in Europe. He studied at the German Universities of Marburg, Berlin, and Erlangen, before finally finishing his studies at Princeton Theological Seminary. In 1900 he was ordained into the Presbyterian Church .
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Joseph Langen
1837 - 1901 (64 years)
Joseph Langen was a German theologian and priest, who was instrumental for the German Old Catholic movement. Langen was born at Cologne, studied at Bonn, and was ordained priest for the Roman Catholic Church in 1859. He was nominated professor extraordinary at the University of Bonn in 1864, and a professor in ordinary of the exegesis of the New Testament in 1867—an office which he held till his death. He was one of the band of professors who in 1870 supported Döllinger in his resistance to the Vatican decrees, and was excommunicated along with Döllinger, Johann Nepomuk Huber, Johann Friedrich, Franz Heinrich Reusch, Joseph Hubert Reinkens and others, for refusing to accept them.
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F. D. Maurice
1805 - 1872 (67 years)
John Frederick Denison Maurice was an English Anglican theologian, a prolific author, and one of the founders of Christian socialism. Since the Second World War, interest in Maurice has expanded. Early life and education John Frederick Denison Maurice was born in Normanston, Lowestoft, Suffolk, on 29 August 1805, the only son of Michael Maurice and his wife, Priscilla. Michael Maurice was the evening preacher in a Unitarian chapel. Deaths in the family brought about changes in the family's "religious convictions" and "vehement disagreement" between family members. Maurice later wrote about th...
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Benito Jerónimo Feijóo y Montenegro
1677 - 1764 (87 years)
Friar Benito Jerónimo Feijóo y Montenegro was a Spanish monk and scholar who led the Age of Enlightenment in Spain. He was an energetic popularizer noted for encouraging scientific and empirical thought in an effort to debunk myths and superstitions.
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Charles S. Reifsnider
1875 - 1958 (83 years)
Charles Shriver Reifsnider was the Anglican bishop of North Tokyo in the Nippon Sei Ko Kai from 1935 to 1940. During his mission years in Japan from 1904 to 1941 he also served as the President of Rikkyo University from 1912 to 1940.
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Abu Hafs Umar al-Nasafi
1067 - 1142 (75 years)
Najm ad-Dīn Abū Ḥafṣ 'Umar ibn Muḥammad an-Nasafī was a Muslim jurist, theologian, mufassir, muhaddith and historian. A Persian scholar born in present-day Uzbekistan, he wrote mostly in Arabic.
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Samuel Hopkins
1721 - 1803 (82 years)
Samuel Hopkins was an American Congregationalist theologian of the late colonial era of the United States. Hopkinsian theology was named for him. Hopkins was an early abolitionist, saying that it was in the interest and duty of the U.S. to set free all of their slaves.
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Guglielmo Audisio
1802 - 1882 (80 years)
Guglielmo Audisio was an Italian Catholic priest and writer. Life Guglielmo Audisio was born January 27, 1802, and graduated with degrees in philosophy and theology from the University of Turin. After teaching for four years in the seminary of Bra, in 1837 he was appointed by King Carlo Alberto, Dean of the Ecclesiastical Academy of Superga, where he taught sacred eloquence, moral theology, canon law and institutions of Roman law. He was expelled from this office because he was opposed to the Piedmontese Government. Audisio was a fervent upholder of papal and Catholic rights against the polit...
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Georg Benedikt Winer
1789 - 1858 (69 years)
Georg Benedikt Winer , German Protestant theologian, known for his linguistic studies of the New Testament. Theologically, Winer was an "anti-trinitarian". Life He studied theology at Leipzig, where in 1819 he began work as a curator at the Universitätsbibliothek Leipzig. In 1823 he became a full professor of theology at the University of Erlangen, then in 1832 returned to Leipzig, where he worked in a similar role as in Erlangen. On several separate occasions he served as dean to the theological faculty, and in 1842 was named university rector.
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George Adam Smith
1856 - 1942 (86 years)
Note in particular that this George Smith is to be distinguished from George Smith who researched in some overlapping areas. Sir George Adam Smith was a Scottish theologian. He was the Principal of the University of Aberdeen between 1909 and 1935.
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Jean Pierre de Caussade
1675 - 1751 (76 years)
Jean Pierre de Caussade was a French Jesuit priest and writer. He is especially known for the work ascribed to him known as Abandonment to Divine Providence, and also his work with the Nuns of the Visitation in Nancy, France.
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Amandus Polanus
1561 - 1610 (49 years)
Amandus Polanus von Polansdorf was a German theologian of early Reformed orthodoxy. After his education in Opava, Wrocław, Tübingen, Basel, and Geneva , he served as a tutor to the family of Zierotin in Heidelberg and Basel , and later taught at the Bohemian Brethren school in Ivančice. Between 1591 and 1595 he again tutored for the Zierotins, traveling from Moravia to Strasbourg and Basel. Polanus spent the last part of his life in Basel, where he became professor of Old Testament in April 1596, and later that year married the daughter of the professor of ancient languages, Johann Jakob Grynaeus .
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Georg Calixtus
1586 - 1656 (70 years)
Georg Calixtus, Kallisøn/Kallisön, or Callisen was a German Lutheran theologian who looked to reconcile all Christendom by removing all differences that he deemed "unimportant". Biography Calixtus was born in Medelby, Schleswig. After studying philology, philosophy and theology at Helmstedt, Jena, Giessen, Tübingen and Heidelberg, he travelled through Holland, France and England, where he became acquainted with the leading reformers. On his return in 1614, he was appointed professor of theology at Helmstedt by the duke of Brunswick, who had admired the ability he displayed when a young man i...
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Joseph Henry Allen
1820 - 1898 (78 years)
Joseph Henry Allen was a Unitarian clergyman, editor and scholar. Biography He was born in Northborough, Massachusetts, the son of Joseph Allen and Lucy Clark. He prepared for college at a school run by his father in Northborough. He graduated at Harvard College, and then at the Divinity School in 1843. He was pastor at the First Congregational Society in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts , the Unitarian church in Washington, D.C. , and a church in Bangor, Maine . In 1857 he departed from full-time ministry and took up teaching and editing Unitarian periodicals . He lectured at Harvard for four y...
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Benjamin G. Wilkinson
1872 - 1968 (96 years)
Benjamin George Wilkinson was a Seventh-day Adventist missionary, educator, and theologian. He served also as Dean of Theology at the Seventh-day Adventist Washington Missionary College which is located in Takoma Park, Maryland, near Washington, D.C. Wilkinson is considered one of the originators of the King James Only beliefs.
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Thomas Gallus
1190 - 1246 (56 years)
Thomas Gallus of Vercelli , sometimes in early twentieth century texts called Thomas of St Victor, Thomas of Vercelli or Thomas Vercellensis, was a French theologian, a member of the School of St Victor. He is known for his commentaries on Pseudo-Dionysius and his ideas on affective theology. His elaborate mystical schemata influenced Bonaventure and The Cloud of Unknowing.
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August Eduard Cunitz
1812 - 1886 (74 years)
August Eduard Cunitz was a French Protestant theologian. He studied at the University of Strasbourg, becoming a lecturer at the Protestant seminary in 1837. In 1857 he became an associate professor, followed by a full professorship in 1864. From 1872 onward, he held a similar position in the re-organized faculty of theology at the university.
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August Weenaas
1835 - 1924 (89 years)
August Weenaas was a Norwegian American Lutheran minister and educator. August Weenaas was the founding President of Augsburg University. Biography August Weenaas was born in Norway and educated in the ministry at the University of Christiania. He was ordained as a minister in the Church of Norway. He served as a pastor there for several years at Loppen prior to immigrating to the United States in 1868. Weenaas resigned his pastorate in the beginning of February 1868. Weenaas became a professor in Paxton, Illinois at the Scandinavian Augustana Synod Seminary in Rock Island, Illinois. In 1869, August Weenaas was named president of Augsburg Seminary.
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Honoré Tournély
1658 - 1729 (71 years)
Honoré Tournély was a French Catholic theologian. He was a Gallican opponent of Jansenism. Life He was born in Antibes, Provence, to poor and obscure parents. An uncle, a priest at Paris, invited him there and gave him a good education. On completing his philosophical and theological studies, he became a doctor of the Sorbonne in 1686, and two years later was sent by the king to the University of Douai to teach theology. Here, he distinguished himself by his lectures and by his opposition of the Jansenists. He was even accused of forgeries in order to compromise them, but the proofs of this ...
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Jacobus de Boragine
1200 - 1178 (-22 years)
Jacobus de Boragine was one of the Glossators, and Four Doctors of Bologna. Also known as Jacobus, he was born in the early 12th century and was an Italian lawyer, one of four students of Irnerius called the Quattuor Doctores, although Savigny disputes the general tradition of his inclusion in this list. The other doctors were Bulgarus, Martinus and Hugo. The legal philosophy of Bulgarus adhered closely to the letter of the law while their fellow, Martinus, took a more natural law and Equity approach. His time at Bologna was therefore one of the formative times in legal theory.
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Ferdinand Janner
1836 - 1895 (59 years)
Ferdinand Janner was a German theologian from Hirschau in the Upper Palatinate. Biography Janner completed his schooling at the Latin school of Amberg. After his graduation there, he studied theology at Würzburg and Regensburg, He was ordained a priest on 13 August 1858.
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Simon Bruté
1779 - 1839 (60 years)
Simon William Gabriel Bruté de Rémur was a French missionary in the United States and the first bishop of the Diocese of Vincennes, Indiana. President John Quincy Adams called Bruté "the most learned man of his day in America."
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Andrew Constantinides Zenos
1855 - 1942 (87 years)
Andrew Constantinides Zenos was a Presbyterian minister, author, translator, professor, and lecturer. He spoke eleven languages including Greek, Latin, and Hebrew. He wrote a large number of books about theology. He spent most of his career at McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago. He was dean of the institution from 1920 to 1934. He is one of three notable Greek-American ministers in the United States during the 19th century. The other two were abolitionists John Celivergos Zachos and Photius Fisk. He frequently lectured across the United States.
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Ignaz Feigerle
1795 - 1863 (68 years)
Ignaz Feigerle was a Catholic theologian and bishop of the Diocese of Sankt Pōlten. Life Feigerle studied at Frintaneum in Vienna. In 1825 he became Professor for Pastoral theology at the Palacký University of Olomouc. In 1829 he moved to the University of Vienna, where he became Rector in 1846. In 1851 he became Bishop of St. Pölten. In 1858 he founded Hippolytus, a scholarly journal, which was edited by Matthäus Binder and Anton Kerschbaumer.
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Timothy Dwight V
1828 - 1916 (88 years)
Timothy Dwight V was an American academic, educator, Congregational minister, and President of Yale University . During his years as the school's president, Yale's schools first organized as a university. His grandfather was Timothy Dwight IV, who served as President of Yale College ninety years before his grandson's tenure.
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Joseph Galien
1699 - Present (327 years)
Joseph Galien OP was a Dominican professor of philosophy and theology at the University of Avignon, meteorologist, physicist, and writer on aeronautics. Biography Born at Saint-Paulien, near Le Puy-en-Velay in southern France, Galien entered the Dominican Order at Le Puy. He studied philosophy and theology at the Dominican institution in Avignon with such success that he was sent to Bordeaux as professor of philosophy as early as 1726. From the year 1745 on he held the chair of theology at Avignon, and from 1747 the chair of philosophy. He seems to have resigned his professorship in 1751 to devote his energies entirely to the study of meteorology and physics.
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Bernhard Stade
1848 - 1906 (58 years)
Bernhard Stade was a German Protestant theologian and historian. Biography He studied at Leipzig and Berlin, and in course of time became professor ordinarius at Giessen. Once a member of Franz Delitzsch's class, he became a convinced adherent of the newest critical school. In 1881 he founded the Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, which he continued to edit; and his critical history of Israel made him very widely known.
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Benjamin Kennicott
1718 - 1783 (65 years)
Benjamin Kennicott was an English churchman and Hebrew scholar. Life Kennicott was born at Totnes, Devon where he attended Totnes Grammar School. He succeeded his father as master of a charity school, but the generosity of some friends enabled him to go to Wadham College, Oxford, in 1744, and he distinguished himself in Hebrew and divinity. While an undergraduate he published two dissertations, On the Tree of Life in Paradise, with some Observations on the Fall of Man, and On the Oblations of Cain and Abel, which obtained him a B.A. before the statutory time.
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Johann Timotheus Hermes
1738 - 1821 (83 years)
Johann Timotheus Hermes was a German poet, novelist and Protestant theologian. Life Provenance Johann Timotheus Hermes was born in Petznick, a small village near Stargard in Western Pomerania. His father was a Protestant pastor. His mother, Lukrezia, was the daughter of another Protestant pastor, Heinrich Becker from Rostock.
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Ernst von Dobschütz
1870 - 1934 (64 years)
Ernst Adolf Alfred Oskar Adalbert von Dobschütz was a German theologian, textual critic, author of numerous books and professor at the University of Halle, the University of Breslau, and the University of Strasbourg. He also lectured in the United States and Sweden.
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Nicolas Cornet
1572 - 1663 (91 years)
Nicolas Cornet was a French Catholic theologian. Life He studied at the Jesuit college of Amiens, took the doctorate of theology at the University of Paris, 1626, and soon became president of the Collège de Navarre and syndic of the Sorbonne . In this latter capacity he reported to the assembly of the Sorbonne, 1649, seven propositions, two taken from Antoine Arnauld's Fréquente Communion and five from the Augustinus of Jansenius.
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Itala Mela
1904 - 1957 (53 years)
Itala Mela was an Italian Roman Catholic who was a lapsed Christian until a sudden conversion of faith in the 1920s and as a Benedictine oblate virgin assumed the name of "Maria della Trinità". Mela became one of the well-known mystics of the Church during her life and indeed following her death. She also penned a range of theological writings that focused on the Trinity, which she deemed was integral to the Christian faith.
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James L. Farmer Sr.
1886 - 1961 (75 years)
James Leonard Farmer Sr. , known as J. Leonard Farmer, was an American author, theologian, and educator. He was a minister in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South and an academic in early religious history as well as theology.
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Feliks Suk
1845 - 1915 (70 years)
Feliks Suk was Croatian university professor and rector of the University of Zagreb. It was Zagreb archbishop and cardinal Juraj Haulik who enabled young Suk a study of theology in Innsbruck. He was ordained for a priest in 1868. He received his Ph.D. in 1870. He conducted various jobs in the Zagreb Archdiocese, before he became a professor of moral theology at the newly established Royal University of Franz Joseph I. He served as a dean of the Faculty of Theology in two mandates. In the academic year 1882/1883 he served as a rector of the University of Zagreb, and the following academic year...
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Islay Burns
1817 - 1872 (55 years)
Islay Burns was a Scottish theologian and writer. Life Burns was born on 16 January 1817 at the manse of Dun in Forfarshire, where his father William Hamilton Burns was parish minister in the Church of Scotland, and his wife, Elizabeth Chalmers. The family moved to Kilsyth near Glasgow in his youth.
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Ernst Haenchen
1894 - 1975 (81 years)
Ernst Haenchen was a German Protestant theologian, professor, and Biblical scholar. Life Ernst Haenchen grew up as the youngest son of a government official along with his two siblings in the West Prussian county town Czarnikau. In 1914 he began studying theology at the Humboldt University of Berlin, which he had to interrupt in the same year after the outbreak of the First World War. The loss of his right leg as a result of a 1918 suffered war injury influenced his further career. In 1926 he first completed his studies in theology at the University of Tübingen. He gave up his first pastorate...
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Franz Jáchym
1910 - 1984 (74 years)
Franz Jáchym was an Austrian prelate of the Roman Catholic Church who served as Coadjutor Bishop of Vienna from 1950–83, and as Titular Archbishop of Maronea. He graduated from the University of Vienna. After ordination, his served in a parish and the diocesan chancery before being appointed coadjutor bishop in 1950. Consecrated in May 1950 by Cardinal Theodor Innitzer, he served in that office until his retirement in 1983.
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Anton Friedrich Büsching
1724 - 1793 (69 years)
Anton Friedrich Büsching was a German geographer, historian, educator and theologian. His Erdbeschreibung was the first geographical work of any scientific merit. He also did significant work on behalf of education.
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