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,
#4101
Johannes Maccovius
1588 - 1644 (56 years)
Johannes Maccovius , also known as Jan Makowski, was a Polish Reformed theologian. Early travels and personal life Makowski was born in Lobzenica, Poland. After visiting various universities and as the tutor of young Polish nobles, holding disputations with Jesuits and Socinians, Maccovius entered the University of Franeker in the Netherlands, in 1613. There he became privat-docent in 1614 and professor of theology in 1615. In later years, the fame of Maccovius attracted many students to Franeker, where he spent the rest of his life.
Go to Profile#4102
Jeremiah Chaplin
1776 - 1841 (65 years)
Jeremiah Chaplin was a Reformed Baptist theologian who served as the first president of Colby College in Maine. Chaplin was born in Rowley, Massachusetts in 1776 to a Baptist family. He attended Brown University, a school with an historical Baptist affiliation, graduating in 1799 with a Bachelor of Arts. Chaplin spent a year at Brown as a tutor and pursued additional theological study to become a minister. To this end, he studied under Thomas Baldwin of the Second Baptist Church in Boston.
Go to Profile#4103
Hans Frei
1922 - 1988 (66 years)
Hans Wilhelm Frei was an American biblical scholar and theologian who is best known for work on biblical hermeneutics. Frei's work played a major role in the development of postliberal theology . His best-known and most influential work is his 1974 book, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative , which examined the history of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century biblical hermeneutics in England and Germany. Frei spent much of his career teaching at Yale Divinity School.
Go to Profile#4104
Edmond Richer
1559 - 1631 (72 years)
Edmond Richer was a French theologian known for several works advocating the Gallican theory, that the pope's power was limited by authority of bishops, and by temporal governments. He was born in Chaource.
Go to Profile#4105
Abraham Scultetus
1566 - 1625 (59 years)
Abraham Scultetus was a German professor of theology, and the court preacher for the Elector of the Palatinate Frederick V. Biography Early life Abraham was born in Grünberg in Schlesien in Silesia and was brought up as a Lutheran. He began his studies in theology in 1588 in Wittenberg and then in 1590 in Heidelberg. When he became Reformed and gave up his Lutheranism is unknown. By 1595 he was working for the Elector of the Palatinate, who at that time was Frederick IV. He continued to serve the churches of the Palatinate and accompanied Frederick V on his honeymoon with his wife Elisabeth, daughter of King James I of England, in 1613.
Go to Profile#4106
David Cohen
1887 - 1972 (85 years)
David Cohen was a rabbi, talmudist, philosopher, kabbalist, and a disciple of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook. A noted Jewish ascetic, he took a Nazirite vow at the outbreak of World War I. Education Cohen was born in Maišiagala, near Vilna , the scion of a distinguished rabbinic family. In his youth he studied at the Raduń Yeshiva under Rabbi Yisrael Meir Kagan, at the Volozhin yeshiva, and at the yeshiva in Slabodka. Even at that time, his restless and inquiring mind led him to extend his studies beyond the traditional subjects taught in the yeshivot. Thus he turned to Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch and the early writings of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook.
Go to Profile#4107
Leon J. Wood
1918 - 1977 (59 years)
Leon James Wood was an American theologian. He is the author of one of the few books on the Holy Spirit as portrayed in the Old Testament as opposed to the New Testament. Wood wrote, "The evidence that spiritual renewal, or regeneration, was true of such Old Testament people lies mainly in two directions. One is that these people lived in a way possible only for those who had experienced regeneration, and the other is the avenue of logical deduction that argues back from New Testament truth."
Go to Profile#4108
Erik Peterson
1890 - 1960 (70 years)
Erik Peterson Grandjean was a German Catholic theologian,patrologist and Church historian. Biography Erik Peterson was born in Hamburg. He studied theology from 1910 to 1914 in Strasbourg, Greifswald, Berlin, Basel and Göttingen, where he defended his doctoral dissertation in 1926. He was initially an evangelical Christian influenced by pietism and Søren Kierkegaard. Through the influence of phenomenology in Göttingen, Edmund Husserl, Adolf Reinach, Hedwig Conrad-Martius, Hans Lipps, Theodor Haecker, Max Scheler, Carl Schmitt, Jacques Maritain and the Liturgical Movement, he opened up to the Catholic world.
Go to Profile#4109
Lelio Sozzini
1525 - 1562 (37 years)
Lelio Francesco Maria Sozzini, or simply Lelio Sozzini , was an Italian Renaissance humanist and theologian, and, alongside his nephew Fausto Sozzini, founder of the Nontrinitarian Christian belief system known as Socinianism. His doctrine was developed among the Polish Brethren in the Polish Reformed Church between the 16th and 17th centuries, and embraced by the Unitarian Church of Transylvania during the same period.
Go to Profile#4110
Jean-Alphonse Turrettini
1671 - 1737 (66 years)
Jean-Alphonse Turrettini was a theologian from the Republic of Geneva. The son of François Turrettini, he was born in Geneva. He studied theology at Geneva under Louis Tronchin , and after travelling in Holland, England and France was received into the "Vénérable Compagnie des Pasteurs" of Geneva in 1693. Here he became pastor of the Italian congregation, and in 1697 professor of church history, and later of theology.
Go to Profile#4111
Margaret Dunlop Gibson
1843 - 1920 (77 years)
#4112
Bernard of Chartres
1070 - 1130 (60 years)
Bernard of Chartres was a twelfth-century French Neo-Platonist philosopher, scholar, and administrator. Life The date and place of his birth are unknown. He was believed to have been the elder brother of Thierry of Chartres and to be of Breton origin, but research has shown that this is unlikely. He is recorded at the cathedral school of Chartres by 1115 and was chancellor until 1124. There is no proof that he was still alive after 1124.
Go to Profile#4113
Georg Fritze
1874 - 1939 (65 years)
Georg Fritze was a German theologian, Protestant pastor, religious socialist and anti-fascist. Career Fritze studied Evangelical Theology in Halle and Marburg. He sat his first theological exam in the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg in 1896, and his second exam in the University of Marburg in 1898. He then did military service from 1889 to 1890. He became an assistant preacher, and later "second pastor" in the Belgian Mission Church in Charleroi , where he ordained on September 30, 1900 . After four years he returned to the Prussian Provincial Church in Saxony, where he made up the vicariate.
Go to Profile#4114
James Bannerman
1807 - 1868 (61 years)
James Bannerman was a Scottish theologian. He is best known for his classic work on Presbyterian ecclesiology, The Church of Christ. Life Bannerman was the son of James Patrick Bannerman, minister of Cargill, Perthshire. He was born at the manse of Cargill on 9 April 1807, and after a distinguished career at the University of Edinburgh, especially in the classes of Sir John Leslie and Professor Wilson, became minister of Ormiston, in Midlothian, in 1833, left the Established Church for the Free Church in 1843, and in 1849 was appointed professor of apologetics and pastoral theology in the N...
Go to Profile#4115
Carl Hildebrand von Canstein
1667 - 1719 (52 years)
Carl or Karl Hildebrand von Canstein , Baron or Count of Canstein, was a German aristocrat who founded the Canstein Bible Institute in Halle, Brandenburg-Prussia, the first modern Bible society. Life He was born at Lindenberg on 4 August 1667. He studied law at Alma Mater Viadrina in Frankfurt-on-the-Oder and, upon finishing his courses, he toured the Netherlands, England, France, Italy, and southern Germany from 1686 to 1688. On the death of the Great Elector Frederick William, he returned to Berlin.
Go to Profile#4116
Henry Pereira Mendes
1852 - 1937 (85 years)
Henry Pereira Mendes , was an American rabbi who was born in Birmingham, England and died in New York City. He was also known as Haim Pereira Mendes. Family history and education Henry Pereira Mendes was born into an old Spanish & Portuguese rabbinic family. His father Abraham Pereira Mendes was Rabbi in Birmingham, England, as well as in Jamaica and the Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island. His grandfather David Aaron de Sola was the Rabbi at Bevis Marks Synagogue in London, and his great-grandfather Raphael Meldola was the Chief Sephardic Rabbi of London. In addition, his brother Frederi...
Go to Profile#4117
Pierre Batiffol
1861 - 1929 (68 years)
Pierre Batiffol – was a French Catholic priest and prominent theologian, specialising in Church history. He had also a particular interest in the history of dogma. Batiffol studied from 1878 at the priest seminary Saint-Sulpice in Paris, was ordained in 1884 and continued his studies at the Institut catholique in Paris and at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes. He was taught by church historian Louis Marie Olivier Duchesne.
Go to Profile#4118
David Blondel
1590 - 1655 (65 years)
David Blondel was a French Protestant clergyman, historian and classical scholar. Life He was born at Châlons-en-Champagne. Ordained in 1614, he had positions as parish priest at Houdan and Roucy. After 1644, he was relieved of duties, and supported free to study full-time.
Go to Profile#4119
Johann August Nösselt
1734 - 1807 (73 years)
Johann August Nösselt was a German Protestant theologian. Beginning in 1751, he studied theology at the University of Halle, where one of his instructors was Siegmund Jakob Baumgarten . In 1755-56 he took an extended study trip throughout Germany, Switzerland and France, eventually returning to Halle, where in 1760 he became an associate professor of theology. In 1764 he attained the title of "full professor" at Halle.
Go to Profile#4120
Bartolomé Carranza
1503 - 1576 (73 years)
Bartolomé Carranza was a Navarrese priest of the Dominican Order, theologian and Archbishop of Toledo. He is notable for having been persecuted by the Spanish Inquisition. He spent much of his later life imprisoned on charges of heresy. He was first denounced in 1530, and imprisoned during 1558–1576. The final judgement found no proof of heresy but secluded him to the Dominican cloister of Santa Maria sopra Minerva where he died seven days later.
Go to Profile#4121
Reinhold Seeberg
1859 - 1935 (76 years)
Reinhold Seeberg was a German Lutheran theologian. He was a professor of theology at Erlangen, where he had studied, and then in 1893 a professor of dogmatic theology at Friedrich Wilhelm University .
Go to Profile#4122
Karl Holl
1866 - 1926 (60 years)
Karl Holl was a professor of theology and church history at Tübingen and Berlin and is considered one of the most influential church historians of his era. Life Karl Holl studied philosophy and theology at the Tübinger Stift. He became a member of the Studentenverbindung Normannia. While serving as a minister in Württemberg, he completed his doctorate and became the lead tutor at the Tübinger Stift in 1891. From 1894 he was active as a research assistant at the Prussian Academy of Sciences at the instigation of Adolf von Harnack. He completed his Habilitation in 1896 at the theological faculty of Berlin.
Go to Profile#4123
Georg Heinrici
1844 - 1915 (71 years)
Carl Friedrich Georg Heinrici was a German Lutheran theologian best known for his studies involving the relationship of early Christianity with its Greek environment. Biography From 1862 to 1867 he studied theology and philosophy at the universities of Halle-Wittenberg and Berlin. In 1873 he became an associate professor of New Testament exegesis at the University of Marburg, where during the following year, he attained a full professorship. In 1892 he succeeded Theodor Zahn as professor of New Testament exegesis at the University of Leipzig, where in 1911/12 he served as rector. From 1892 to...
Go to Profile#4124
Wolfgang Musculus
1497 - 1563 (66 years)
Wolfgang Musculus was a Reformed theologian of the Reformation. Life Born in the village of Duss , in a German-speaking area , Musculus was a lover of song and of knowledge, of languages, Humanism and religion. The oral tradition of his songs is still found in the churches of the Reformation.
Go to Profile#4125
Jan Ridderbos
1879 - 1960 (81 years)
Jan Ridderbos was a minister in the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands and since 1912 professor of Old Testament at the Theological College in Kampen. Jan Ridderbos is the father of Herman Nicolaas Ridderbos, later professor in Kampen, and Nicolaas Herman Ridderbos, later a professor at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
Go to Profile#4126
Heinrich Klee
1800 - 1840 (40 years)
Heinrich Klee was a German theologian and Biblical exegete who argued against liberal and Rationalist currents in Catholic thought. Biography At the age of seventeen Klee entered the seminary at Mainz. In 1824, a year after his ordination, he was appointed to the professorship of exegesis and ecclesiastical history in the same seminary, and in the following year also to that of philosophy. In the meantime he obtained the Doctorate of Theology from the University of Würzburg after presenting the thesis Tentamen theologico-historicum de chiliasmo primorum saecolurum. In 1829 the government of B...
Go to Profile#4127
Edward Reynolds
1599 - 1676 (77 years)
Edward Reynolds was a bishop of Norwich in the Church of England and an author. He was born in Holyrood parish in Southampton, the son of Augustine Reynolds, one of the customers of the city, and his wife, Bridget.
Go to Profile#4128
Theodore Emanuel Schmauk
1860 - 1920 (60 years)
Theodore Emanuel Schmauk, D.D., LL.D. was an American Lutheran minister, educator, author and Church theologian. Theodore Emanuel Schmauk was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, the son of a Lutheran minister, Rev. Benjamin W. and Wilhelmina C. Schmauk. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, being ordained by the Ministerium of Pennsylvania in that year. In 1897, he received the degree of D.D. from Muhlenberg College and in 1910, the degree of LL.D. from Augustana College.
Go to Profile#4129
Franz Ferdinand Benary
1805 - 1880 (75 years)
Franz Ferdinand Benary was a German orientalist and exegete. He was the older brother of classical philologist Agathon Benary. From 1824 he studied theology and oriental languages at the universities of Bonn, Halle and Berlin. At Halle he was especially influenced by the teachings of Wilhelm Gesenius. In 1829 he qualified as a lecturer of oriental languages at the University of Berlin, where in 1831, he was appointed an associate professor of Old Testament exegesis.
Go to Profile#4130
Benedict Stattler
1728 - 1797 (69 years)
Benedict Stattler was a German Jesuit theologian, and an opponent of Immanuel Kant. He was a member of the German Catholic Enlightenment. Life Benedict Stattler was born at Kötzting, Bavaria. He was educated by the Benedictines of Niederaltaich Abbey. He entered the Jesuit novitiate at Landsberg in 1745 and, after the usual studies, taught philosophy and theology in Solothurn , Innsbruck, and Ingolstadt. He was ordained in 1759. In Ingolstadt, he continued to occupy the chair of theology even after the suppression of the Society of Jesus in 1773. In 1774, he also assumed the duties of parish priest of the Church of St.
Go to Profile#4131
Joseph Schnitzer
1859 - 1939 (80 years)
Joseph Schnitzer was a theologian. He started teaching at Munich University in 1902. Literary works Quellen und Forschungen zur Geschichte Savonarolas, 6 vols., 1902–1914Savonarola, 2 vols., 1924 External links MTA at nyitottegyetem.phil-inst.hu
Go to Profile#4132
Louis Gerlach Pareau
1800 - 1866 (66 years)
Louis Gerlach Pareau, was a Dutch theologian born in Deventer. He was the son of Jean Henri Pareau , a professor of Oriental languages at the University of Utrecht. In 1826 he graduated from Utrecht with a dissertation titled Commentatio critica et exegetica in Paulinae Epistolae prioris ad Corinthos caput XIII. In 1831 he was appointed professor of theology at the University of Groningen, where he remained until his death in 1866. At Groningen he taught classes in exegesis and hermeneutics.
Go to Profile#4133
Thomas Bayes
1702 - 1761 (59 years)
Thomas Bayes was an English statistician, philosopher and Presbyterian minister who is known for formulating a specific case of the theorem that bears his name: Bayes' theorem. Bayes never published what would become his most famous accomplishment; his notes were edited and published posthumously by Richard Price.
Go to Profile#4134
Konrad Pellikan
1478 - 1556 (78 years)
Konrad Pellikan was a German Protestant theologian, humanist, Protestant reformer and Christian Hebraist who worked chiefly in Switzerland. Life His German surname, "Kurscherer" was changed to "Pellicanus" by his mother's brother, Jodocus Gallus, an ecclesiastic connected with the University of Heidelberg, who supported his nephew for sixteen months at the university in 1491-1492. On returning to Rouffach 1493, he entered the Franciscan convent. There he taught gratis at the convents school in order he might borrow books from the library, and in his sixteenth year resolved to become a friar.
Go to Profile#4135
Heinrich Döring
1789 - 1862 (73 years)
Heinrich Doring, born Michael Johann Heinrich Döring was a German writer, theologian and mineralogist. He became known mainly as a biographer of the German classical writers, and especially the first biographer of Goethe.
Go to Profile#4136
Edward Everett Nourse
1863 - 1929 (66 years)
Edward Everett Nourse, D.D. was an American Congregational theologian. Nourse was born at Bayfield, Wisconsin. He studied at the College and the Academy at Lake Forest, Illinois, at Macalester College in Minnesota, Hartford Theological Seminary , and in Europe at the University of Jena
Go to Profile#4137
Matthew Barker
1619 - 1698 (79 years)
Matthew Barker was an English Independent minister and parliamentarian, known for his work on natural theology and for his participation in English 17th-century politics. Life Matthew Barker was born in Great Cransley, Northamptonshire, to parents unknown. He worked as a schoolmaster in Banbury, Oxfordshire, until the outbreak of the English Civil War, at which point he became preacher to a London parish. Barker was an avid parliamentarian and was invited to preach a sermon before the House of Commons on 25 October 1648. The new republic welcomed him, and his moderation earned him the favo...
Go to Profile#4138
Georg Lasson
1862 - 1932 (70 years)
Georg Lasson was a German Protestant theologian, and a son of Adolf Lasson. He was a co-editor of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's Sämtliche Werke in the Meiner edition . Although the result is not always praised today, his edition is useful to researches as he had access to manuscripts that have since been lost.
Go to Profile#4139
Reginald Heber
1783 - 1826 (43 years)
Reginald Heber was an English Anglican bishop, a man of letters, and hymn-writer. After 16 years as a country parson, he served as Bishop of Calcutta until his death at the age of 42. The son of a rich landowner and cleric, Heber gained fame at the University of Oxford as a poet. After graduation he made an extended tour of Scandinavia, Russia and Central Europe. Ordained in 1807, he took over his father's old parish, Hodnet, Shropshire. He also wrote hymns and general literature, including a study of the works of the 17th-century cleric Jeremy Taylor.
Go to Profile#4140
Gustav Friedrich Dinter
1760 - 1831 (71 years)
Gustav Friedrich Dinter was a German pedagogue, theologian and author. Biography He was born at Borna. He studied theology and pedagogy at Leipzig; held several pastorates, was appointed director of the Teachers' Seminary at Dresden in 1797, and became professor of theology at the University of Königsberg in 1822.
Go to Profile#4141
Mark Hopkins
1802 - 1887 (85 years)
Mark Hopkins was an American educator and Congregationalist theologian, president of Williams College from 1836 to 1872. An epigram — widely attributed to President James A. Garfield, a student of Hopkins — defined an ideal college as "Mark Hopkins on one end of a log and a student on the other."
Go to Profile#4142
John Mason Neale
1818 - 1866 (48 years)
John Mason Neale was an English Anglican priest, scholar, and hymnwriter. He worked and wrote on a wide range of holy Christian texts, including obscure medieval hymns, both Western and Eastern. Among his most famous hymns is the 1853 Good King Wenceslas, set on Boxing Day. An Anglo-Catholic, Neale's works have found positive reception in high-church Anglicanism and Western Rite Orthodoxy.
Go to Profile#4143
Joseph Parker
1830 - 1902 (72 years)
Joseph Parker was an English Congregational minister. Life Born in Hexham, Northumberland, Parker was the son of Teasdale Parker, a stonemason, and Elizabeth . He managed to pick up a fair education, which afterwards he constantly supplemented. In the revolutionary years from 1845 to 1850 young Parker as a local preacher and temperance orator gained a reputation for vigorous utterance. He was influenced by Thomas Cooper, the Chartist, and Edward Miall, the Liberationistist, and was much associated with Joseph Cowen, afterwards MP for Newcastle upon Tyne.
Go to Profile#4144
Dimitrije Najdanović
1897 - 1986 (89 years)
Dimitrije Najdanović was a Serbian theologian, writer, and Serbian Orthodox priest. Biography Dimitrije Najdanović was born in Kragujevac in Serbia, on 7 June 1897, into comfortable middle-class circumstances. He was the son of a devoutly Serbian Orthodox mother and a strict but personable schoolteacher-father.
Go to Profile#4145
Hildebert
1056 - 1133 (77 years)
Hildebert of Lavardin was a French ecclesiastic, hagiographer and theologian. From 1096–97 he was bishop of Le Mans, then from 1125 until his death archbishop of Tours. Life Hildebert was born of poor parents at Lavardin, near Vendôme, and was intended for the church. He was probably a pupil of Berengar of Tours, and became master of the school at Le Mans; in 1091 he was made archdeacon and in 1096 or 1097 bishop of Le Mans. He had to face the hostility of a section of his clergy and also of the English king, William II, who captured Le Mans and carried the bishop with him to England for abo...
Go to Profile#4146
William of St-Thierry
1075 - 1148 (73 years)
William of Saint-Thierry, O. Cist was a twelfth-century Benedictine, theologian and mystic from Liège who became abbot of Saint-Thierry in France, and later joined the Cistercian Order. Biography William was born at Liège of a noble family between 1075 and 1080 , and died at Signy-l'Abbaye in 1148. He probably studied at the cathedral school in Reims, though some have argued it was at Laon, prior to his profession as a Benedictine monk. He became a monk with his brother Simon at the monastery of St. Nicaise, also in Reims, sometime after 1111. From here both eventually became abbots of other...
Go to Profile#4147
Friedrich Spitta
1852 - 1924 (72 years)
Friedrich Spitta was a German Protestant theologian. Biography Spitta was born at Wittingen, Lower Saxony, the son of German hymn writer Karl Johann Philipp Spitta and brother of Philipp . Friedrich studied at the universities of Göttingen and Erlangen, where he was a pupil of Johann Christian Konrad von Hofmann. In the course of time he became professor ordinarius and university preacher at St. Thomas, Strasbourg. In 1901 he was appointed university rector. In 1919 he was named a professor at the University of Göttingen.
Go to Profile#4148
Giovanni Battista Riccioli
1598 - 1671 (73 years)
Giovanni Battista Riccioli, SJ was an Italian astronomer and a Catholic priest in the Jesuit order. He is known, among other things, for his experiments with pendulums and with falling bodies, for his discussion of 126 arguments concerning the motion of the Earth, and for introducing the current scheme of lunar nomenclature. He is also widely known for discovering the first double star. He argued that the rotation of the Earth should reveal itself because on a rotating Earth, the ground moves at different speeds at different times.
Go to Profile#4149
Samuel Belkin
1911 - 1976 (65 years)
Samuel Belkin was the second President of Yeshiva University. An American Rabbi and distinguished Torah scholar, he is credited with leading Yeshiva University through a period of substantial expansion.
Go to Profile#4150
Abu Raita al-Takriti
775 - 835 (60 years)
Abu Raita al-Takriti , was a 9th-century Syriac Orthodox theologian and apologist. Biography Little is known about Abu Raita's life, and although some sources portray him as a bishop of Tikrit there is no contemporary evidence to support this. Abu Raita referred to himself as a "teacher" . It appears that his reputation as a theologian made him so well known that he was recalled to defend his fellow non-Chalcedonian co-religionists in Armenia.
Go to Profile