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,
#4301
John of Shanghai and San Francisco
1896 - 1966 (70 years)
John of Shanghai and San Francisco was a prominent Eastern Orthodox ascetic and hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia who was active in the mid-20th century. He was a pastor and spiritual father of high reputation and a reputed wonderworker to whom were attributed powers of prophecy, clairvoyance and healing. He is often referred to as "St. John the Wonderworker".
Go to Profile#4302
Joseph Henry Thayer
1828 - 1901 (73 years)
Joseph Henry Thayer was an American Biblical scholar from Boston, Massachusetts. Life Joseph Henry Thayer was born in 1828 in Boston. He graduated from Harvard University in 1850 and from Andover Theological Seminary in 1857. From 1858 to 1864 he served as a pastor—first in Quincy, Massachusetts, then in Salem—and served as a chaplain of the 40th Massachusetts Volunteers in the Civil War. After the war, he returned to Massachusetts to become Professor of Sacred Literature at Andover Theological Seminary, where he taught until 1882. In 1884, he began teaching New Testament criticism at Harvard.
Go to Profile#4303
Vincent Ferrer
1350 - 1419 (69 years)
Vincent Ferrer, OP was a Valencian Dominican friar and preacher, who gained acclaim as a missionary and a logician. He is honored as a saint of the Catholic Church and other churches of Catholic traditions.
Go to Profile#4304
Martín de Azpilcueta
1492 - 1586 (94 years)
Martín de Azpilcueta , or Doctor Navarrus, was an important Spanish canonist and theologian in his time, and an early economist who independently formulated the quantity theory of money in 1556. Life He was born in Barásoain, Navarre, and was a relative of Francis Xavier. He obtained a degree in theology at Alcalá, then in 1518 he obtained a degree of doctor in canon law from Toulouse in France. Beginning in 1524, Azpilcueta served in several canon law chairs at the University of Salamanca. From 1538 to 1556, he taught at Coimbra University in Portugal, at the invitation of the kings of Portu...
Go to Profile#4305
Harris Franklin Rall
1870 - 1964 (94 years)
Harris Franklin Rall , Ph.D. was the first president of Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado after it reopened in 1910 till 1915, and he also served as the Henry White Warren professor of Practical Theology. Rall later became president of Garrett Biblical Institute in Evanston, Illinois, and taught theology there. Rall was active in the social gospel movement, seeking to relate Christianity to the ills of society. Garrett named its lecture series after him.
Go to Profile#4306
Leonidas Proaño
1910 - 1988 (78 years)
Leonidas Eduardo Proaño Villalba was an Ecuadorian prelate and theologian. He served as the bishop of Riobamba from 1954 to 1985. He was a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize and is considered one of the most important figures in Ecuadorian liberation theology.
Go to Profile#4307
Hermann Hupfeld
1796 - 1866 (70 years)
Hermann Hupfeld was a Protestant German Orientalist and Biblical commentator. He is known for his historical-critical studies of the Old Testament. He was born at Marburg, where he studied philosophy and theology from 1813 to 1817. In 1819 he became a teacher in the gymnasium at Hanau, but in 1822 resigned that appointment. After studying for some time at Halle, he in 1824 settled as Privatdozent in philosophy at that university, and in the following year was appointed extraordinary professor of theology at Marburg. There he received professorships of theology and Oriental languages in 1825 and 1827 respectively.
Go to Profile#4308
Frederick Temple
1821 - 1902 (81 years)
Frederick Temple was an English academic, teacher and churchman, who served as Bishop of Exeter , Bishop of London and Archbishop of Canterbury . Early life Temple was born in Santa Maura, one of the Ionian Islands, the son of Major Octavius Temple, who was subsequently appointed lieutenant-governor of Sierra Leone. On his retirement, Major Temple settled in Devon and contemplated a farming life for his son Frederick, giving him a practical training to that end.
Go to Profile#4309
John Duncan
1796 - 1870 (74 years)
John Duncan , also known as 'Rabbi' Duncan, was a minister of the Free Church of Scotland, a missionary to the Jews in Hungary, and Professor of Hebrew and Oriental Languages at New College, Edinburgh. He is best remembered for his aphorisms.
Go to Profile#4310
Johannes Heinrich August Ebrard
1818 - 1888 (70 years)
Johannes Heinrich August Ebrard was a German Protestant theologian. Biography Born at Erlangen, he was educated in his native town and at Berlin, and after teaching in a private family became Privatdozent at Erlangen and then professor of theology at Zürich . In 1847 he was appointed professor of theology at Erlangen, a chair which he resigned in 1861; in 1875 he became pastor of the French reformed church in the same city.
Go to Profile#4311
Isaac Backus
1724 - 1806 (82 years)
Isaac Backus was a leading Baptist minister during the era of the American Revolution who campaigned against state-established churches in New England. Little is known of his childhood. In "An account of the life of Isaac Backus" , he provides genealogical information and a chronicle of events leading to his religious conversion.
Go to Profile#4312
Johann Anastasius Freylinghausen
1670 - 1739 (69 years)
Johann Anastasius Freylinghausen was a theologian of the pietist Halle School and a scholar and follower of August Hermann Francke. He was the second director of the Franckeschen Stiftungen, a collection of schools for orphans.
Go to Profile#4313
Pope Stephen II
714 - 757 (43 years)
Pope Stephen II was born a Roman aristocrat and member of the Orsini family. Stephen was the bishop of Rome from 26 March 752 to his death. Stephen II marks the historical delineation between the Byzantine Papacy and the Frankish Papacy. During Stephen's pontificate, Rome was facing invasion by the Lombards when Stephen II went to Paris to seek assistance from Pepin the Short. Pepin defeated the Lombards and made a gift of land to the pope, eventually leading to the establishment of the Papal States.
Go to Profile#4314
Edwards Amasa Park
1808 - 1900 (92 years)
Edwards Amasa Park was an American Congregational theologian. Biography Born in Providence, Rhode Island, Park was the son of Calvin Park . Edwards Amasa Park graduated at Brown University in 1826, was a teacher at Braintree for two years, and in 1831 graduated from Andover Theological Seminary. He was co-pastor of the orthodox Congregational church of Braintree in 1831-1833; professor of mental and moral philosophy at Amherst in 1835; and Bartlet professor of sacred rhetoric , and Abbot professor of Christian theology at Andover. He died at Andover on 4 June 1900.
Go to Profile#4315
Francis Crawford Burkitt
1864 - 1935 (71 years)
Francis Crawford Burkitt was an English theologian. As Norris Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge from 1905 until shortly before his death, Burkitt was a sturdy critic of the notion of a distinct "Caesarean Text" of the New Testament put forward by B. H. Streeter and others.
Go to Profile#4316
Johann August Ernesti
1707 - 1781 (74 years)
Johann August Ernesti was a German Rationalist theologian and philologist. Ernesti was the first who formally separated the hermeneutics of the Old Testament from those of the New. Biography Ernesti was born in Tennstedt in present-day Thuringia, where his father, Johann Christoph Ernesti, was pastor, besides being superintendent of the electoral dioceses of Thuringia, Salz and Sangerhausen. At the age of sixteen, Ernesti was sent to the celebrated Saxon cloister school of Pforta . At twenty he entered the University of Wittenberg, and studied afterwards at the University of Leipzig. In 1730 he was made master in the faculty of philosophy.
Go to Profile#4317
Nicholas Afanasiev
1893 - 1966 (73 years)
Nikolay Nikolayevich Afanasiev was an Eastern Orthodox theologian who was ordinary professor of the St. Sergius Orthodox Theological Institute in Paris. Afanasiev was born in Odessa, in the Russian Empire. He fought with the White Russian Army, and then studied in Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia before going to France. He lectured at St. Sergius for ten years before being ordained a priest in the Eastern Orthodox Church in 1940, whereupon he served in Tunisia until 1947. He then returned to St Sergius, where he served until his death.
Go to Profile#4318
Franz Volkmar Reinhard
1753 - 1812 (59 years)
Franz Volkmar Reinhard was a German Protestant theologian born in Vohenstrauß. Biography In 1780 he became an associate professor of theology and philosophy at the University of Wittenberg, where he served as rector in 1790–91. In 1792 he was appointed Oberhofprediger to the Saxon court in Dresden.
Go to Profile#4319
Martin Luther King Sr.
1899 - 1984 (85 years)
Martin Luther King Sr. was an African-American Baptist pastor, missionary, and an early figure in the Civil Rights Movement. He was the father and namesake of the civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. He was the senior pastor of Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church from 1931 to 1975.
Go to Profile#4320
Ezra Stiles
1727 - 1795 (68 years)
Ezra Stiles was an American educator, academic, Congregationalist minister, theologian, and author. He is noted as the seventh president of Yale College and one of the founders of Brown University. According to religious historian Timothy L. Hall, Stiles' tenure at Yale distinguishes him as "one of the first great American college presidents."
Go to Profile#4321
Friedrich von Hügel
1852 - 1925 (73 years)
Friedrich von Hügel was an influential Austrian Catholic layman, religious writer, and Christian apologist. Although classified with Modernistss due to his friendships with Alfred Loisy and George Tyrrell, von Hügel rejected the Modernist theory of belief.
Go to Profile#4322
Nicholas of Lyra
1270 - 1349 (79 years)
Nicholas of Lyra , or Nicolaus Lyranus, a Franciscan teacher, was among the most influential practitioners of biblical exegesis in the Middle Ages. Little is known about his youth, aside from the fact of his birth, around 1270, in Lyre, Normandy.
Go to Profile#4323
Johann Konrad Dippel
1673 - 1734 (61 years)
Johann Konrad Dippel, also spelled Johann Conrad Dippel , was a German Pietist theologian, physician, alchemist and occultist. Life Dippel was born at Castle Frankenstein near Mühltal and Darmstadt, and therefore once at his school the addendum Franckensteinensis and once at his university the addendum Franckensteina-Strataemontanus was used.
Go to Profile#4324
Anselm of Laon
1050 - 1117 (67 years)
Anselm of Laon , properly Ansel , was a French theologian and founder of a school of scholars who helped to pioneer biblical hermeneutics. Biography Born of very humble parents at Laon before the middle of the 11th century, he is said to have studied under Saint Anselm at Bec, though this is almost certainly incorrect. Other potential teachers of Anselm have been identified, including Bruno of Cologne and Manegold of Lautenbach. By around 1080, he had moved back to his place of birth and was teaching at the cathedral school of Laon, with his brother Ralph. Around 1109, he became dean and chancellor of the cathedral, and in 1115 he was one of Laon's two archdeacons.
Go to Profile#4325
James Denney
1856 - 1917 (61 years)
James Denney was a Scottish theologian and preacher. He is probably best known today for his theological articulation of the meaning of the atonement within Christian theology, atonement for him being “the most profound of all truths”. Many have misunderstood his position, arguing that he was known for his defense of the doctrine of penal substitution. However, Denny himself protested vigorously against this characterization.
Go to Profile#4326
William Vorilong
1390 - 1463 (73 years)
William Vorilong, also known as Guillermus Vorrilong, Willem of Verolon, William of Vaurouillon, Guilelmus de Valle Rouillonis, etc. was a French philosopher and theologian. He wrote a biography of Duns Scotus. From 1457 onwards he was a regent master in Lyon, becoming licentiate and master of theology at Lyon in 1458.
Go to Profile#4327
Joseph Sittler
1904 - 1987 (83 years)
Joseph Andrew Sittler was an American Lutheran minister and theologian who taught at Maywood Seminary, eventually merged into the Divinity School of the University of Chicago and the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. He was also active in the Christian ecumenical movement, working with World Council of Churches and the National Council of Churches.
Go to Profile#4328
Franz Hermann Reinhold von Frank
1827 - 1894 (67 years)
Franz Hermann Reinhold von Frank was a German theologian born in Altenburg. He was an important figure in the "Erlangen School" of the German Neo-Lutheranism movement, and a specialist in theological dogmatics.
Go to Profile#4329
John Tulloch
1823 - 1886 (63 years)
John Tulloch was a Scottish theologian. Life Tulloch was born at Dron, south of Bridge of Earn, Perthshire, one of twin sons of Elizabeth , the daughter of a Perthshire farmer, and William Weir Tulloch, parish minister of Tibbermore, near Perth.
Go to Profile#4330
Franz Hettinger
1819 - 1890 (71 years)
Franz Hettinger was a German Catholic theologian. Life He attended the gymnasium in his native city and afterwards, from 1836 to 1839, the academy in the same city, where he finished philosophy and began theology. As the teaching of the latter science was discontinued in this academy in 1839, he entered the ecclesiastical seminary at Würzburg and continued his studies there from the autumn of 1839 to that of 1841.
Go to Profile#4331
Joseph Clifford Fenton
1906 - 1969 (63 years)
Joseph Clifford Fenton was a Catholic priest who promoted conservative theology. He was a professor of fundamental dogmatic theology at the Catholic University of America and editor of the American Ecclesiastical Review . A strong opponent of liberal beliefs, he was a significant American Catholic theologian of the 20th century. He served as a peritus for Cardinal Ottaviani at the Second Vatican Council, where his position was overruled. He was also secretary of the Catholic Theological Society of America.
Go to Profile#4332
Pierre Jurieu
1637 - 1713 (76 years)
Pierre Jurieu was a French Protestant leader. Life He was born at Mer, in Orléanais, where his father was a Protestant pastor. He studied at the Academy of Saumur and the Academy of Sedan under his grandfather, Pierre Du Moulin, and under Leblanc de Beaulieu. After completing his studies in the Netherlands and England, Jurieu was ordained as an Anglican priest; returning to France he was ordained again and succeeded his father as pastor of the church at Mer. Soon after this he published his first work, Examen de livre de la reunion du Christianisme . In 1674 his Traité de la dévotion led to ...
Go to Profile#4333
Andreas Gottlob Rudelbach
1792 - 1862 (70 years)
Andreas Gottlob Rudelbach was a Dano-German neo-Lutheran theologian. Biography He was born at Copenhagen; died at Slagelse, Zealand. He was educated the Metropolitanskolen and attended the University of Copenhagen, where he received the academic title privatdozent. During this period in collaboration with N. F. S. Grundtvig, he edited the Theologisk Maanedskrift In 1829 he was called to the pastorate of Glauchau, Saxony, where he aided religious awakening and revolt against the rationalism of the period, though at the same time he opposed any formal separation from the Lutheran Church.
Go to Profile#4334
Henry of Ghent
1217 - 1293 (76 years)
Henry of Ghent was a scholastic philosopher, known as Doctor Solemnis , and also as Henricus de Gandavo and Henricus Gandavensis. Life Henry was born in the district of Mude, near Ghent. He is supposed to have belonged to an Italian family named Bonicolli, in Dutch Goethals, but the question of his name has been much discussed . He studied at Ghent and then at Cologne under Albertus Magnus. After obtaining the degree of doctor he returned to Ghent, and is said to have been the first to lecture there publicly on philosophy and theology.
Go to Profile#4335
Alexander Men
1935 - 1990 (55 years)
Alexander Vladimirovich Men was a Soviet Russian Orthodox priest, dissident, theologian, biblical scholar and writer on theology, Christian history and other religions. Men wrote dozens of books ; baptized hundreds if not thousands; founded an Orthodox open university; opened one of the first Sunday schools in Russia as well as a charity group at the Russian Children's Hospital. His influence is still widely felt and his legacy continues to grow among Christians both in Russia and abroad. He was murdered early on a Sunday morning, on 9 September 1990, by an ax-wielding assailant outside his h...
Go to Profile#4336
Firmin Abauzit
1679 - 1767 (88 years)
Firmin Abauzit was a French scholar who worked on physics, theology and philosophy, and served as librarian in Geneva during his final 40 years. Abauzit is also notable for proofreading or correcting the writings of Isaac Newton and other scholars.
Go to Profile#4337
Camilo Torres Restrepo
1929 - 1966 (37 years)
Camilo Torres Restrepo was a Colombian Marxist–Leninist, Roman Catholic priest, a proponent of liberation theology, and a member of the National Liberation Army . During his life, he tried to reconcile revolutionary Marxism and Catholicism. His social activism and willingness to work with Marxists troubled some.
Go to Profile#4338
Franz Peter Knoodt
1811 - 1889 (78 years)
Franz Peter Knoodt was a German Catholic theologian who was a native of Boppard. He studied theology in Bonn und Tübingen, and later worked as a chaplain and teacher in Trier. In 1841-43 he furthered his studies in Vienna, where he was a student of Anton Günther . In 1844 he earned his doctorate of theology at Breslau, and in 1845 became a professor of philosophy at the Catholic faculty of theology at the University of Bonn. From May 1848 to February 1849 he was a member of the Frankfurt National Assembly.
Go to Profile#4339
Giovanni Maria Tolosani
1471 - 1549 (78 years)
Giovanni Maria Tolosani was an Italian theologian, writer, a prior of the Dominican order at the convent of St. Mark in Florence a mathematician and an astronomer. He is best known for writing the first notable denunciation of Copernican heliocentric theory in 1545.
Go to Profile#4340
Martin Thornton
1915 - 1986 (71 years)
Martin Thornton was an English Anglican priest, spiritual director, author and lecturer on ascetical theology. His "theology of the remnant" has been influential in Anglican circles. He was active for much of his life in the Diocese of Truro, England, serving 10 years as the canon chancellor of Truro Cathedral. He died on 22 June 1986 and was buried at the Townsend Cemetery, Crewkerne, South Somerset District, Somerset, England. The epitaph on his tombstone is "The word of God his Rule / The Glory of God his Aim / And to God the Holy Trinity / was all his guiding."
Go to Profile#4341
J. B. Lightfoot
1828 - 1889 (61 years)
Joseph Barber Lightfoot , known as J. B. Lightfoot, was an English theologian and Bishop of Durham. Life Lightfoot was born in Liverpool, where his father John Jackson Lightfoot was an accountant. His mother, Ann Matilda Barber, was from a family of Birmingham artists. He was educated at King Edward's School, Birmingham, under James Prince Lee. His contemporaries included Brooke Foss Westcott and Edward White Benson. In 1847, Lightfoot went to Trinity College, Cambridge, and read for his degree along with Westcott. He graduated senior classic and 30th wrangler, and was elected a fellow of his college.
Go to Profile#4342
Francis Atterbury
1663 - 1732 (69 years)
Francis Atterbury was an English man of letters, politician and bishop. A High Church Tory and Jacobite, he gained patronage under Queen Anne, but was mistrusted by the Hanoverian Whig ministries, and banished for communicating with the Old Pretender in the Atterbury Plot. He was a noted wit and a gifted preacher.
Go to Profile#4343
Theognostus of Alexandria
210 - 270 (60 years)
Theognostus was a late 3rd century Alexandrian theologian. He is known from quotes by Athanasius and Photios I of Constantinople. Philip of Side says that he presided over the school of Alexandria after Pierius . Although a disciple of Origen of Alexandria no reference of him can be found by Eusebius or Jerome. The main textual point of reference is derived from Athanasius.
Go to Profile#4344
Leonhard Hutter
1563 - 1616 (53 years)
Leonhard Hutter was a German Lutheran theologian. Life He was born at Nellingen near Ulm. From 1581 he studied at the universities of Strasbourg, Leipzig, Heidelberg and Jena. In 1594 he began to give theological lectures at Jena, and in 1596 accepted a call as professor of theology at Wittenberg, where he died twenty years later.
Go to Profile#4345
Franz Hildebrandt
1909 - 1985 (76 years)
Franz Hildebrandt was a German-born Lutheran, and later Methodist, pastor and theologian, forced into exile during World War II, and subsequently active in the United Kingdom and the USA. Life Hildebrandt was the son of the art professor Edmund Hildebrandt and his wife Ottilie, née Schlesinger . He studied theology in Berlin, Marburg, and Tübingen . During his time in Berlin, he became a close friend of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. In 1930, he was awarded a licentiate by the University of Berlin; his first book was based on his doctoral dissertation.
Go to Profile#4346
Adam Neuser
1530 - 1576 (46 years)
Adam Neuser was a Protestant pastor of Heidelberg who held Antitrinitarian views. Neuser was born in Gunzenhausen and was a popular pastor and theologian in Heidelberg in the 1560s, serving at the Peterskirche and later the Heiliggeistkirche. During the controversy over church discipline that developed in the late 1560s, Neuser became a leading member of the Antidisciplinist, and thus anti-Calvinist, faction led by Thomas Erastus. His disaffection with the ecclesiastical regime perhaps played some role in his doubts concerning orthodox Christian dogma. He wrote letters sternly attacking the doctrine of the trinity.
Go to Profile#4347
Sebastiaan Tromp
1889 - 1975 (86 years)
Sebastiaan Peter Cornelis Tromp was a Dutch Jesuit priest, theologian, and Latinist, who is best known for assisting Pope Pius XII in his theological encyclicals, and Pope John XXIII in the preparation for Vatican II. He was an assistant to Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani during the Council and professor of Catholic theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University from 1929 until 1967.
Go to Profile#4348
Wilhelmus à Brakel
1635 - 1711 (76 years)
Wilhelmus à Brakel , also known as "Father Brakel", was a Reformed minister and theologian in the Netherlands. He was a contemporary of Gisbertus Voetius and Hermann Witsius and a major representative of the Dutch Further Reformation .
Go to Profile#4349
Johann Joachim Spalding
1714 - 1804 (90 years)
Johann Joachim Spalding was a German Protestant theologian and philosopher of Scottish ancestry who was a native of Tribsees, Swedish Pomerania. He was the father of Georg Ludwig Spalding , a professor at Grauen Kloster in Berlin.
Go to Profile#4350
Kornelis Heiko Miskotte
1894 - 1976 (82 years)
Kornelis Heiko Miskotte was a Dutch Protestant theologian and a representative of dialectical theology. Life Miskotte was born to a conservative Reformed Protestant family in the Netherlands. After attending Christian high school, he studied theology in his home city of Utrecht from 1914 to 1920. Theologically, he came under influence of the ethical theology of Johannes Hermanus Gunning, who taught an artful synthesis of modern culture and biblical revelation. Philosophically, Miskotte was also influenced by the Neo-Kantian B.J.H. Ovink.
Go to Profile