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,
#401
Gerald Bray
#30730
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Gerald Lewis Bray is a British theologian, ecclesiastical historian and priest in the Church of England. Teaching Born in Montreal, Quebec, on 16 November 1948, Bray holds a BA from McGill University and a MLitt and DLitt from University of Paris-Sorbonne. He was librarian of Tyndale House, Cambridge, from 1975 to 1978 when he was ordained in the Church of England and served in the parish of St Cedd, Canning Town , until 1980. From 1980 to 1992 he taught ecclesiastical history and doctrine at Oak Hill Theological College in London. From 1993 to 2006 he taught at Beeson Divinity School where he is now a research professor.
Go to Profile#402
David F. Wells
#34736
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (85 years)
David Falconer Wells is Distinguished Senior Research Professor at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. He is the author of several books in which his evangelical theology engages with the modern world. He has taught at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and has served as the Academic Dean at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary's Charlotte, North Carolina campus.
Go to Profile#403
Tashi Tsering
#35432
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Serme Khen Rinpoche Geshe Tashi Tsering BEM is abbot of Sera Mey Monastic University in India. From 1994 to 2018, he was the resident Tibetan Buddhist teacher at Jamyang Buddhist Centre, London. Tsering was born in Purang, Tibet in 1958, and his parents escaped to India in 1959. He entered Sera Mey Monastic University in South India when he was 13 years old, and graduated with a Lharampa Geshe degree 16 years later. Geshe Tashi then entered the Higher Tantric College for a year of study.
Go to Profile#404
Juan Luis Cipriani Thorne
#12197
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Juan Luis Cipriani Thorne is a Peruvian prelate of the Catholic Church. He was Archbishop of Lima from 1999 to 2019. He has been a bishop since 1988 and was made a cardinal in 2001. Early life and career Cipriani attended the Colegio Santa Maria Marianistas, a Catholic school, and as a young man he was a member of the Peruvian national basketball team for six years. He studied industrial engineering at the Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería in Lima, Peru, and worked as an engineer.
Go to Profile#405
David Steindl-Rast
#10792
Overall Influence
1926 - Present (98 years)
David Steindl-Rast OSB is an Austrian-American Catholic Benedictine monk, author, and lecturer. He is committed to interfaith dialogue and has dealt with the interaction between spirituality and science.
Go to Profile#406
Marvin A. Sweeney
#28457
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Marvin Alan Sweeney is Professor of Hebrew Bible at Claremont School of Theology . Dr. Sweeney was trained under the tutelage of Rolf P. Knierim at Claremont Graduate University. He was a Yad ha-Nadiv/Barecha Foundation Post-Doctoral Fellow in Jewish Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he worked with Moshe Greenberg ; a Lilly Theological Research Grant Recipient ; and a Fellow of the Summer Institute for Modern Israel Studies, sponsored by the American Jewish Committee and Brandeis University . Sweeney previously taught in the Religious Studies Department and Judaic Studie...
Go to Profile#407
Loren Stuckenbruck
#32904
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Loren T. Stuckenbruck is a historian of early Christianity and Second Temple Judaism, currently professor of New Testament at the University of Munich, in Germany. His work has exerted a significant impact on the field.
Go to Profile#408
Rosalio José Castillo Lara
#24084
Overall Influence
1922 - 2007 (85 years)
Rosalio José Castillo Lara was a Venezuelan prelate of the Catholic Church. He worked in the Roman Curia for almost all of his career, first with responsibility for rewriting the code of canon law and then in administrative positions in the government of the Holy See. He was made a cardinal in 1985.
Go to Profile#409
Antoine Vergote
#8974
Overall Influence
1921 - 2013 (92 years)
Antoine Vergote , also known as Antoon Vergote, was a Belgian Roman Catholic priest, theologian, philosopher, psychologist and psychoanalyst. He was an Emeritus Professor at the Catholic University of Leuven. His extensive publications span multiple disciplines including psychoanalysis, hermeneutics, philosophical anthropology, linguistics, theology, cultural anthropology, and phenomenology.
Go to Profile#410
Carter Lindberg
#32846
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (87 years)
Carter Lindberg is an American historian. He is Professor Emeritus of Church History at Boston University School of Theology and is best known for his book The European Reformations. Lindberg studied at Augustana College, the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, and the University of Iowa.
Go to Profile#411
Jung Mo Sung
#25902
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Jung Mo Sung is a Roman Catholic lay theologian, writer and lecturer trained in theology, ethics, and education. He was born in South Korea, and raised in Brazil where he lives today. Sung is currently a professor in the graduate program of Religious Studies at the Methodist University of São Paulo, in the area of Liberation Theology and Economy Theological critique of neoliberalism.
Go to Profile#412
Geoffrey Wainwright
#30248
Overall Influence
1939 - 2020 (81 years)
Geoffrey Wainwright was an English theologian. He spent much of his career in the United States and taught at Duke Divinity School. Wainwright made major contributions to modern Methodist theology and Christian liturgy, and played a significant role on producing the text Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry, as a member of the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches .
Go to Profile#413
John S. Kloppenborg
#25254
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
John S. Kloppenborg is a Canadian professor of religious studies with expertise in Greco-Roman culture, Judean culture and Christian origins, particularly the synoptic gospels and Q-source. Kloppenborg is at the University of Toronto since 2007, where he holds the title of university professor. He was elected a member of the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas in 1990, and was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2014. In 2019-2020 he served as the president of the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas. He is also a member of the Context Group, the Society of Biblical Literature, and the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies.
Go to Profile#414
David W. Miller
#23888
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
David W. Miller is on the faculty of Princeton University, Director of the Princeton University Faith & Work Initiative, and scholar of the "faith at work" movement. Previously he taught for five years at the Yale School of Management and the Yale Divinity School and was the founding Executive Director of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture. Prior to academia he was a senior executive in international business for 16 years.
Go to Profile#415
Anthony Thiselton
#27712
Overall Influence
1937 - 2023 (86 years)
Anthony Charles Thiselton was an English Anglican priest, theologian, and academic. He wrote a number of books and articles on a range of topics in Christian theology, biblical studies, and the philosophy of religion. He served on the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, appointed by the Minister of Health.
Go to Profile#416
George Newlands
#26602
Overall Influence
George McLeod Newlands is a Scottish theologian widely published in the fields of modern systematic theology, Christology, emancipatory theology, and the history of Christian thought. He is Emeritus Professor of Divinity at the University of Glasgow, and served as Chair of the Theology, Divinity & Religious Studies panel of the UK's 2008 Research Assessment Exercise and as President of the Society for the Study of Theology for 2013–14.
Go to Profile#417
Daniel Boyarin
#12450
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Daniel Boyarin is an Israeli-American historian of religion. Born in New Jersey, he holds dual United States and Israeli citizenship. He is the Hermann P. and Sophia Taubman Professor of Talmudic Culture in the Departments of Near Eastern Studies and Rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley. He is married to Chava Boyarin, a lecturer in Hebrew at UC Berkeley. They have two sons. His brother, Jonathan Boyarin, is also a scholar, and the two have written together. He has defined himself as a "diasporic rabbinic Jew".
Go to Profile#418
John F. Haught
#12012
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
John F. Haught is an American theologian. He is a Distinguished Research Professor at Georgetown University. He specializes in Roman Catholic systematic theology, with a particular interest in issues pertaining to physical cosmology, evolutionary biology, geology, and Christianity.
Go to Profile#419
Norman Shepherd
#31684
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (91 years)
Norman Shepherd is an American theologian who served as associate professor of systematic theology at Westminster Theological Seminary from 1963 to 1981. Shepherd had a number of views that were criticized as being contrary to the Westminster Standards, and this led him to be dismissed from his post at Westminster. First and foremost, Shepherd was found to have taught students in the classroom that Justification was by the twofold instrument of faith and good works. This directly contradicted one of the two foundational Christian truths recovered during the Protestant Reformation—and a doctri...
Go to Profile#420
Mark S. Smith
#14440
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Mark Stratton John Matthew Smith is an American biblical scholar, anthropologist, and professor. Early life and education Born in Paris to Donald Eugene Smith and Mary Elizabeth Reichert, Smith grew up in Washington, D.C., with his six sisters and two brothers. For elementary school, he attended Blessed Sacrament School. For grades 7–12, he went to St. Anselm's Abbey School.
Go to Profile#421
Ebrahim Moosa
#20895
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Ebrahim Moosa is the Mirza Family Professor of Islamic Thought & Muslim Societies at the University of Notre Dame with appointments in the Department of History and in the Kroc Institute for International Studies in the Keough School of Global Affairs. He is co-director of the Contending Modernities program at Notre Dame. He was previously Professor of Religion and Islamic Studies at Duke University. He is considered a leading scholar of contemporary Muslim thought. Moosa has been named as one of the top 500 Influential Muslims in the World.
Go to Profile#422
Mahmoud M. Ayoub
#21048
Overall Influence
1935 - 2021 (86 years)
Mahmoud M. Ayoub was a Lebanese Islamic scholar and professor of religious and inter-faith studies. Early life Mahmoud was born into a devout Muslim family on June 1, 1935, at Ain Qana , a small town with an integrated religious population. His upbringing was socially integrated with events and people from both the Islamic and Christian religious faiths. Mahmoud Ayoub attended a British Presbyterian missionary school for the blind as a child. He described his experience in that school noting that "the school authorities did not really have an educational programme for us, what they wanted to...
Go to Profile#423
Kevin Conner
#37057
Overall Influence
1927 - 2019 (92 years)
Kevin J. Conner was a Pentecostal theologian who was formerly the senior minister of Waverley Christian Fellowship in Melbourne, Australia. Conner is the author of nearly 60 books and has taught nationally and internationally at many churches, conferences and bible colleges.
Go to Profile#424
R. T. France
#24129
Overall Influence
1938 - 2012 (74 years)
Richard Thomas France , known as R. T. France or Dick France, was a New Testament scholar and Anglican cleric. He was Principal of Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, from 1989 to 1995. He also worked for the London School of Theology.
Go to Profile#425
Catherine Pickstock
#12687
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Catherine Jane Crozier Pickstock is an English philosophical theologian. Best known for her contributions to the radical orthodoxy movement, she has been Norris-Hulse Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge since 2018 and a fellow and tutor of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. She was previously Professor of Metaphysics and Poetics.
Go to Profile#426
David K. Bernard
#30037
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
David K. Bernard is an American New Testament scholar and Oneness Pentecostal theologian. He currently serves as the General Superintendent of the United Pentecostal Church International, the largest Oneness Pentecostal organization with constituents worldwide. He teaches as a Professor of Biblical Studies and Apostolic Leadership at Urshan Graduate School of Theology, where he also serves as Chancellor.
Go to Profile#427
Rod Rosenbladt
#22497
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Rod Rosenbladt is a former Professor of Theology at Concordia University Irvine in California, and is also well-known among Lutheran, Reformed, and Evangelical Christians as the former co-host of the nationally syndicated radio program "The White Horse Inn". He now does his own program as part of the 1517 project discussed below.
Go to Profile#428
He Guanghu
#24791
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
He Guanghu is a Chinese scholar of philosophy of religion and Christian theology. He is considered one of the leading "cultural Christians" in China, intellectuals who see Christian culture as a key to rebuilding Chinese civilization.
Go to Profile#429
Robert Kolb
#30592
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Robert Kolb is professor emeritus of Systematic Theology at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri, and a world-renowned authority on Martin Luther and the history of the Reformation. Biography and education Robert Kolb was born on June 17, 1941, in Fort Dodge, Iowa. He married Pauline J. Ansorge on August 14, 1965.
Go to Profile#430
Robert E. Van Voorst
#18103
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Robert E. Van Voorst is an American theologian and educator. He retired in 2018 as a Professor of New Testament Studies at Western Theological Seminary, in Holland, Michigan, and has published scholarly works in early Christian writings and New Testament Greek. He received his B.A. in Religion from Hope College in Holland, Michigan, his M.Div. from Western Theological Seminary, and his Ph.D. in New Testament from Union Theological Seminary in New York City. He has served at Lycoming College in Williamsport, PA, and was a visiting professor at Westminster College, Oxford, England. He has lec...
Go to Profile#431
Gregory Baum
#17450
Overall Influence
1923 - 2017 (94 years)
Gerhard Albert Baum , better known as Gregory Baum, was a German-born Canadian priest and theologian in the Catholic Church. He became known in North America and Europe in the 1960s for his work on ecumenism, interfaith dialogue, and the relationship between the Catholic Church and Jews. In the later 1960s, he went to the New School for Social Theory in New York and became a sociologist, which led to his work on creating a dialogue between classical sociology and Christian theology.
Go to Profile#432
Ali Bardakoğlu
#26614
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Ali Bardakoğlu served as the president of the Presidency of Religious Affairs of Turkey between 2003 and 2010. Background Ali Bardakoğlu was born in 1952 in Tosya in the province of Kastamonu. He has been the president of the Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı since May 2003. In 1975 he obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in law from Istanbul University. Later he became an assistant for Islamic law at the High Islamic Institute in Kayseri. In 1982, he earned his PhD in Islamic studies from Atatürk University and taught as assistant professor at the theology faculty of the Erciyes University. From 1991...
Go to Profile#433
Volker Zotz
#19597
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Volker Helmut Manfred Zotz is an eminent Austrian philosopher, religious studies scholar, Buddhologist and a prolific author. Early life The Zotz family originated in Tyrol and spread to Germany. Volker Zotz was born in Landau in der Pfalz, Germany, where he attended elementary school and high school.
Go to Profile#434
John L. McKenzie
#26977
Overall Influence
1910 - 1991 (81 years)
John Lawrence McKenzie was an American Catholic biblical scholar. Biography McKenzie was born on October 9, 1910, in Brazil, Indiana, the first of the six children of Myra and Harry McKenzie. John McKenzie became the premier Catholic biblical scholar of the mid-twentieth century; indeed, John Courtney Murray wrote that John McKenzie was "the best Catholic theologian he knew of in the United States."
Go to Profile#435
Fred Craddock
#25991
Overall Influence
1928 - 2015 (87 years)
Fred Brenning Craddock Jr. was Bandy Distinguished Professor of Preaching and New Testament Emeritus in the Candler School of Theology at Emory University. He was an ordained minister of the Christian Church from rural Tennessee. He was the director of the Craddock Center, a non-profit service group which operates in rural Appalachia.
Go to Profile#436
R. R. Reno
#18926
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Russell Ronald Reno III , known as R. R. Reno, is the editor of First Things magazine. He was formerly a professor of theology and ethics at Creighton University. Biography Reno was born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1959, and grew up in Towson, Maryland. A graduate of Towson High School in 1978, after a year living in his tent in Yosemite Valley, he attended Haverford College, receiving a B.A. in 1983. He began graduate study at Yale University in the Department of Religious Studies in 1984 and completed his doctoral degree in 1990 in the area of religious ethics. While in graduate school he met and married Juliana Miller, with whom he has had two children, Rachel and Jesse .
Go to Profile#437
Robin Collins
#12141
Overall Influence
Robin Alan Collins is an American philosopher. He currently serves as the Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and chair of the Department of Philosophy at Messiah University in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. His main interests include philosophical issues related to the relationship between religion and science and philosophical theology.
Go to Profile#438
Wolfgang Ullmann
#16233
Overall Influence
1929 - 2004 (75 years)
Wolfgang Ullmann was a German journalist, theologian, politician. Life Wolfgang Ullmann was born in Bad Gottleuba near Dresden. From 1948 to 1954 he studied Protestant theology and also philosophy, first in Berlin and then at the University of Göttingen.
Go to Profile#439
Jean-Yves Lacoste
#37393
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Jean-Yves Lacoste is a French philosopher. Lacoste is associated with what Dominique Janicaud called the "theological turn in phenomenology", along with other influential French phenomenologists like Michel Henry, Jean-Luc Marion and Jean-Louis Chrétien. Lacoste's work straddles philosophy and theology, and displays an interest in what might be called postmodern themes. He works in Paris and Cambridge and has a life membership at Clare Hall, Cambridge.
Go to Profile#440
John Romanides
#23768
Overall Influence
1927 - 2001 (74 years)
John Savvas Romanides was a theologian, Eastern Orthodox priest, and scholar who had a distinctive influence on post-war Greek Orthodox theology. Biography Born in Piraeus, Greece, on 2 March 1928, his parents emigrated to the United States when he was only two months old. He grew up in Manhattan, graduating from the Hellenic College, Brookline, Massachusetts. After attending Yale Divinity School, he received his Ph.D. from the University of Athens.
Go to Profile#441
Khaleel Mohammed
#14898
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Khaleel Mohammed was a Guyanese-born professor of Religion at San Diego State University , in San Diego, California, a member of Homeland Security Master's Program, and, as of January 2021, Director of SDSU's Center for Islamic and Arabic Studies.
Go to Profile#442
Rolf Rendtorff
#19768
Overall Influence
1925 - 2014 (89 years)
Rolf Rendtorff was Emeritus Professor of Old Testament at the University of Heidelberg. He has written frequently on the Jewish scriptures and was notable chiefly for his contribution to the debate over the origins of the Pentateuch .
Go to Profile#443
Andrew Sandlin
#22228
Overall Influence
P. Andrew Sandlin is a Christian minister, cultural theologian, and author; the founder and president of the Center for Cultural Leadership in Coulterville, California; De Yong Distinguished Visiting Professor of Culture and Theology at Edinburg Theological Seminary in Pharr, Texas; and core faculty at Evan Runner International Academy for Cultural Leadership of the Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity in Grimsby, Ontario. He was formerly president of the National Reform Association and executive vice president of the Chalcedon Foundation.
Go to Profile#444
Süleyman Ateş
#31294
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (91 years)
Süleyman Ateş is a Turkish theologian, philosopher, and writer. He was 12th Director of religious affairs of Turkey. He graduated at Ankara University and passed out the highest degree. He attended an assistant program in the same university. He searched some studies in his field in Ruhr-University Bochum. He taught Commentary of Quran and Quran receding in Imam Muhammad ibn Saud Islamic University and Al-Emir Abdulkadir University Algeria. He served as the head of the department of Elemental Islamic Sciences at Ondokuz Mayıs University and as the head of Elemental Islamic Sciences in the Faculty of Theology in Istanbul University.
Go to Profile#445
Alf Hiltebeitel
#10721
Overall Influence
1942 - 2023 (81 years)
Alfred John Hiltebeitel was Columbian Professor of Religion, History, and Human Sciences at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., US. His academic specialism was in ancient Sanskrit epics such as the Mahabharata and Ramayana, together with Indian religious tradition and folklore.
Go to Profile#446
John D. Turner
#15788
Overall Influence
1938 - 2019 (81 years)
John D. Turner was the Cotner Professor of Religious Studies and Charles J. Mach University Professor of Classics and History Classics & Religious Studies at the University of Nebraska. He was well known for his translations of the Nag Hammadi library.
Go to Profile#447
Jeremy Begbie
#25940
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Jeremy Sutherland Begbie, BA, BD, PhD, LRAM, ARCM, is Thomas A. Langford Distinguished Research Professor of Theology at Duke Divinity School, Duke University, where he is the McDonald Agape Director of Duke Initiatives in Theology and the Arts. He is a systematic theologian whose primary research interest is the correlation between theology and the arts, in particular the interplay between music and theology. He is also an Affiliated Lecturer in the Faculty of Music at the University of Cambridge.
Go to Profile#448
Otto Hermann Pesch
#41704
Overall Influence
1931 - 2014 (83 years)
Otto Hermann Pesch was a German Roman Catholic theologian. Pesch became member of the Dominican order 1952 and was ordained priest 1958, but 1972 left the order and was married. From 1975 to 1998 he was a professor of systematic theology in the University of Hamburg, as a Roman Catholic in a Protestant department of theology. As an ecumenical theologian Pesch was a disciple of Heinrich Fries. He made his doctoral thesis 1965 about doctrine of justification comparing Martin Luther and Thomas Aquinas.
Go to Profile#449
Everett Fox
#26225
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Everett Fox is a scholar and translator of the Hebrew Bible. A graduate of Brandeis University, he is currently the Allen M. Glick Professor of Judaic and Biblical Studies and director of the program in Jewish Studies at Clark University.
Go to Profile#450
Kwame Bediako
#33880
Overall Influence
1945 - 2008 (63 years)
Kwame Bediako , also known as Manasseh Kwame Dakwa Bediako, was a Ghanaian Christian theologian and Rector for the Akrofi-Christaller Institute for Theology, Mission and Culture in Akropong, Ghana. Biography Bediako was born in Akropong, Ghana and, as the son of a police inspector, grew up in a Police Training Depot in Accra. Due to this upbringing, he learned and spoke his mother tongue of Twi and the Accra language Ga.
Go to Profile