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,
#4901
Michel de Certeau
1925 - 1986 (61 years)
Michel de Certeau was a French Jesuit priest and scholar whose work combined history, psychoanalysis, philosophy, and the social sciences as well as hermeneutics, semiotics, ethnology, and religion. He was known as a philosopher of everyday life and widely regarded as a historian who had interests ranging from travelogues of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to contemporary urban life.
Go to Profile#4902
Karl Budde
1850 - 1935 (85 years)
Karl Ferdinand Reinhard Budde was a German theologian, born in Bensberg, and a well-known authority on the Old Testament. Biography He studied theology, philosophy and history at the universities of Bonn and Berlin, obtaining his habilitation for Old Testament studies at Bonn in 1873. He was inspector of the Evangelisches Theologisches Stift in Bonn from 1878 to 1885, and in the meantime, became an associate professor of Old Testament theology at the University of Bonn . In 1889 he attained a full professorship at Strassburg, and from 1900 to 1921 served as president of Old Testament theology and exegesis at the University of Marburg.
Go to Profile#4903
William of Rubruck
1220 - 1293 (73 years)
William of Rubruck or Guillaume de Rubrouck was a Flemish Franciscan missionary and explorer. He is best known for his travels to various parts of the Middle East and Central Asia in the 13th century, including the Mongol Empire. His account of his travels is one of the masterpieces of medieval travel literature, comparable to those of Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta.
Go to Profile#4904
Heinrich Vogel
1902 - 1989 (87 years)
Heinrich Vogel was an evangelical theologian, poet of sacred texts and songs and composer of numerous motets and chamber music. He studied theology at the University of Berlin and the University of Jena. In 1927 he became a minister for the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union in Oderberg.
Go to Profile#4905
Jacob Peter Mynster
1775 - 1854 (79 years)
Jacob Peter Mynster was a Danish theologian and clergy member of the Church of Denmark. He served as Bishop of the Diocese of Zealand from 1834 until his death. Mynster was notably used as an exemplar of conservative religion by Søren Kierkegaard in his book Attack Upon Christendom.
Go to Profile#4906
Julius Müller
1801 - 1878 (77 years)
Julius Müller was a German Protestant theologian. Biography He was born at Brieg and studied at Breslau, Göttingen and Berlin – first law, which he later abandoned for theology. From 1825 to 1831, he was in charge of several small parishes. In 1831, he was second university preacher at Göttingen University, and lectured on practical theology and pedagogics. In 1834, he became professor extraordinarius of theology there. From 1835 to 1839 he was professor in Marburg. In 1839 he became professor ordinarius of theology at the University of Halle, where he remained for the rest of his life. He d...
Go to Profile#4907
Wu Leichuan
1870 - 1944 (74 years)
Wu Leichuan was a leading Chinese theologian in the early 20th century and Chancellor of Yenching University. Biography From his childhood, Wu poured his energy into mastering the Confucian classics and working his way up through the imperial examinations, obtaining the level of Jìnshì in 1898 in Beijing after passing the metropolitan and imperial examinations. He converted to Christianity in 1915 and became Yenching University's first Chinese vice-president and chancellor between 1926 and 1934.
Go to Profile#4908
Hans Ehrenberg
1883 - 1958 (75 years)
Hans Philipp Ehrenberg was a German Jewish philosopher and theologian. One of the co-founders of the Confessing Church, he was forced to emigrate to England because of his Jewish ancestry and his opposition to Nazism.
Go to Profile#4909
Filippo Bernardini
1884 - 1954 (70 years)
Filippo Bernardini was an Italian prelate of the Catholic Church. He spent almost his entire career in the diplomatic service of the Holy See and was given the rank of archbishop in 1933. He was Apostolic Delegate to Australia for two years before taking up the position of Apostolic Nuncio to Switzerland where he served from 1935 to 1953. During World War II, he was active in the Catholic resistance to Nazism and provided assistance to Jews during the Nazi Holocaust. He served briefly as Secretary of the Congregation for Propagation of the Faith just before his death. Before entering the dipl...
Go to Profile#4910
Salomo Glassius
1593 - 1656 (63 years)
Salomo Glassius was a German theologian and biblical critic born at Sondershausen, in the principality of Schwarzburg-Sondershausen. In 1612 he entered the University of Jena. In 1615, with the intent of studying law, he moved to Wittenberg. Due to illness, he returned to Jena after a year. Here, as a student of theology under Johann Gerhard, he directed his attention especially to Hebrew and the cognate dialects. In 1619 he was made an adjunctus of the philosophical faculty. He later was appointment as Professor of Hebrew.
Go to Profile#4911
James Moffatt
1870 - 1944 (74 years)
James Moffatt was a Scottish theologian and graduate of the University of Glasgow. Moffatt trained at the Free Church College, Glasgow, and was a practising minister at the United Free Church in Dundonald in the early years of his career. He received the degree Doctor of Divinity from the University of St Andrews in April 1902.
Go to Profile#4912
Al-Shawkani
1759 - 1839 (80 years)
Muḥammad ibn Ali ibn Muḥammad ibn Abd Allah, better known as al-Shawkānī , was a prominent Yemeni Sunni Islamic scholar, jurist, theologian and reformer. Shawkani was one of the most influential proponents of Athari theology and is revered as one of their canonical scholars by Salafi Muslims. His teachings played a major role in the emergence of the Salafi movement. Influenced by the teachings of the medieval Hanbali scholar Ibn Taymiyya, Al-Shawkani became noteworthy for his staunch stances against the practice of Taqlid , calls for direct interpretation of Scriptures, opposition to Kalam as...
Go to Profile#4913
Henri Grenier
1899 - 1980 (81 years)
Henri Grenier was a French Canadian priest, theologian, and philosopher. He was the author of a manual of Thomistic philosophy, once widely used in Roman Catholic seminaries. Life Grenier was born in Gaspé, Quebec, and ordained for the diocese of Gaspé in 1924. He studied philosophy at the Angelicum in Rome , and at the major seminary in Gaspé . From 1927-1930 he studied theology at the Angelicum and Canon law at the Pontifical Lateran University. He held doctorates in philosophy, theology, and canon law. From 1930 to 1947 he was professor of theology at the seminary of Québec. In 1938 he was incardinated in the diocese of Québec.
Go to Profile#4914
Henry Barclay Swete
1835 - 1917 (82 years)
Henry Barclay Swete was an English biblical scholar. He became Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge in 1890. He is known for his 1906 commentary on the Book of Revelation, and other works of exegesis.
Go to Profile#4915
Moses Amyraut
1596 - 1664 (68 years)
Moïse Amyraut, Latin Moyses Amyraldus , in English texts often Moses Amyraut, was a French Huguenot, Reformed theologian and metaphysician. He was the architect of Amyraldism, a Calvinist doctrine that made modifications to Calvinist theology regarding the nature of Christ's atonement and covenant theology.
Go to Profile#4916
Johannes Buxtorf
1564 - 1629 (65 years)
Johannes Buxtorf was a celebrated Hebraist, member of a family of Orientalistss; professor of Hebrew for thirty-nine years at Basel and was known by the title, "Master of the Rabbis". His massive tome, De Synagoga Judaica , scrupulously documents the customs and society of German Jewry in the early modern period.
Go to Profile#4917
Orosius
385 - 418 (33 years)
Paulus Orosius , less often Paul Orosius in English, was a Roman priest, historian and theologian, and a student of Augustine of Hippo. It is possible that he was born in Bracara Augusta , then capital of the Roman province of Gallaecia, which would have been the capital of the Kingdom of the Suebi by his death. Although there are some questions regarding his biography, such as his exact date of birth, it is known that he was a person of some prestige from a cultural point of view, as he had contact with the greatest figures of his time such as Augustine of Hippo and Jerome of Stridon. In orde...
Go to Profile#4918
Nicolaus Hunnius
1585 - 1643 (58 years)
Nicolaus Hunnius was an orthodox Lutheran theologian of the Lutheran scholastic tradition. Hunnius was born at Marburg, the third son of Egidius Hunnius. At the age of fifteen he entered the University of Wittenberg, where he studied philology, philosophy, and theology. In 1609 he joined the philosophical faculty and lectured in philosophy and theology. He followed the same theological direction as his father, inherited his temper and talent as a polemist, and was like him, possessed of great learning. In virtue of his ability Elector John George I. of Saxony appointed him, in 1612, superin...
Go to Profile#4919
Sabato Morais
1823 - 1897 (74 years)
Sabato Morais was an Italian-American rabbi of Portuguese descent, leader of Mikveh Israel Synagogue in Philadelphia, pioneer of Italian Jewish Studies in America, and founder of the Jewish Theological Seminary, which initially acted as a center of education for Orthodox Rabbis.
Go to Profile#4920
Martin Kähler
1835 - 1912 (77 years)
Martin Kähler was a German theologian. He is best known for his short work, published in 1892, Der sogenannte historische Jesus und der geschichtliche, biblische Christus . Kähler was born in Neuhausen near Königsberg and died in Freudenstadt. He had a profound impact upon the famous Protestant theologian, Paul Tillich.
Go to Profile#4921
Clarence Bouma
1891 - 1962 (71 years)
Clarence Bouma was a theologian and professor at Calvin Theological Seminary. Early life and education Bouma was born Klaas Bouma in the Netherlands in 1891 as the son of Doeke Bouma and Trijntje de Jong. The family immigrated to the United States in May 1905. He earned his A.B. at Calvin College, and his B.D. at Princeton Seminary, where he was awarded the Gelston-Winthrop Fellowship in Apologetics. He went on to earn his A.M. from Princeton University, and his Th.D. from Harvard Divinity School.
Go to Profile#4922
Johann Hülsemann
1602 - 1661 (59 years)
Johann Hülsemann was a German Lutheran theologian. He is known as one of the most prominent Lutheran scholastic opponents of Georgius Calixtus in the Syncretistic Controversy. Biography Early life and education Hülsemann was born at Esens, 65 m. n.w. of Bremen in East Frisia, 4 December 1602. He was educated at Norden, Stade, and Hanover. Before he had reached the age of eighteen, he went to the University of Rostock, and two years later to Wittenberg. He also studied briefly at Marburg.
Go to Profile#4923
Albert Kalthoff
1850 - 1906 (56 years)
Albert Kalthoff was a German Protestant theologian, who along with Emil Felden , Oscar Mauritz , Moritz Schwalb and Friedrich Steudel formed a group in Bremen, named the Deutscher Monistenbund , who no longer believed in Jesus as a historical figure.
Go to Profile#4924
Heinrich Müller
1631 - 1675 (44 years)
Heinrich Müller was a German devotional author, Protestant writer of hymns, a Lutheran minister and theologian and a professor at the University of Rostock from 1647 to 1650. He famously denounced the font, the pulpit, the confessional, and the altar as "the four dumb idols of the Lutheran Church". He died in Rostock, aged 43.
Go to Profile#4925
Johann Friedrich König
1619 - 1664 (45 years)
Johann Friedrich König was a German Lutheran theologian, born in Dresden. From 1656 he was a professor at the university of Rostock. He died in Rostock, aged 44.
Go to Profile#4926
Jan Hendrik Scholten
1811 - 1885 (74 years)
Jan Hendrik Scholten , Dutch Protestant theologian, was born at Vleuten near Utrecht. Biography After studying at Utrecht University, he was appointed professor of theology in 1840 at Franeker. From Franeker in 1843 he went to Leiden as professor extraordinarius, and in 1845 was promoted to the rank of ordinarius. Through Scholten, Abraham Kuenen became interested in theology; Scholten was not then the radical theologian he became later. The two scholars in course of time created a movement resembling that of the Tübingen School in Germany. From his theology there "began to rise a different ty...
Go to Profile#4927
Domingo Báñez
1528 - 1604 (76 years)
Domingo Báñez was a Spanish Dominican and Scholastic theologian. The qualifying Mondragonensis sometimes attached to his name seems to refer to the birthplace of his father, Juan Báñez, at Mondragón in Guipúzcoa.
Go to Profile#4928
Alban Stolz
1808 - 1883 (75 years)
Alban Isidor Stolz was a German Roman Catholic theologian and popular author. Life Stolz was born at Bühl, Baden. He first studied at the gymnasium at Rastatt , and then proceeded to the University of Freiburg. After attending lectures in jurisprudence for a brief period, he devoted himself to the study of theology . He fell into scepticism; but after studying philology at the University of Heidelberg from 1830 to 1832 he regained his former Catholic faith.
Go to Profile#4929
Milton Steinberg
1903 - 1950 (47 years)
Milton Steinberg was an American rabbi, philosopher, theologian and author. Life Born in Rochester, New York, he was raised with the combination of his grandparents' traditional Jewish piety and his father's modernist socialism. He graduated as valedictorian of his class at DeWitt Clinton High School and then majored in Classics at City College of New York which he graduated from summa cum laude in 1924. Steinberg received his doctorate in philosophy from Columbia University in 1928 and then entered the Jewish Theological Seminary of America where he was ordained. In seminary, he was strongly...
Go to Profile#4930
Louis Segond
1810 - 1885 (75 years)
Louis Segond was a Swiss theologian who translated the Bible into French from the original texts in Hebrew and Greek. He was born in Plainpalais, near Geneva. After studying theology in Geneva, Strasbourg and Bonn, he was pastor of the Geneva National Church in Chêne-Bougeries, then from 1872, Professor of Old Testament in Geneva.
Go to Profile#4931
Geert Groote
1340 - 1384 (44 years)
Gerard Groote , otherwise Gerrit or Gerhard Groet, in Latin Gerardus Magnus, was a Dutch Catholic deacon, who was a popular preacher and the founder of the Brethren of the Common Life. He was a key figure in the Devotio Moderna movement.
Go to Profile#4932
Edward Beecher
1803 - 1895 (92 years)
Edward Beecher was an American theologian, the son of Lyman Beecher and the brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe and Henry Ward Beecher. Biography Beecher was born August 27, 1803, in East Hampton, New York. He graduated from Yale College in 1822. After this, he studied theology at Andover Theological School.
Go to Profile#4933
Cleland Boyd McAfee
1866 - 1944 (78 years)
Cleland Boyd McAfee was an American theologian, Presbyterian minister and hymn writer, best known for penning the gospel hymn, "Near to the Heart of God," and its tune called "McAfee". He wrote the song after the concurrent deaths of two of his young nieces, caused by diphtheria. He also is believed to be the creator of the acronym TULIP, which represents the Five Points of Calvinism.
Go to Profile#4934
Francis Brown
1849 - 1916 (67 years)
The Rev. Francis Brown American Semitic scholar, was born in Hanover, New Hampshire. He was the son of Samuel Gilman Brown , president of Hamilton College from 1867 to 1881, and the grandson of Francis Brown, whose removal from the presidency of Dartmouth College and later restoration were incidental to the famous Dartmouth College case.
Go to Profile#4935
Naftali Herz Tur-Sinai
1886 - 1973 (87 years)
Naftali Herz Tur-Sinai was a Bible scholar, author, and linguist instrumental in the revival of the Hebrew language as a modern, spoken language. Tur-Sinai was the first president of the Academy of the Hebrew Language and founder of its Historical Dictionary Project.
Go to Profile#4936
Andrews Norton
1786 - 1853 (67 years)
Andrews Norton was an American preacher and theologian. Along with William Ellery Channing, he was the leader of mainstream Unitarianism of the early and middle 19th century, and was known as the "Unitarian Pope". He was the father of the writer Charles Eliot Norton.
Go to Profile#4937
Joachim Lütkemann
1608 - 1655 (47 years)
Joachim Lütkemann was a German Lutheran theologian and writer of devotional literature. Life Joachim Lütkemann was the son of Samuel Lütkemann, an apothecary from Demmin who had become mayor, and his wife Katharina, née Zander. After attending school in Demmin, he went to university in Greifswald in 1624, then in 1626 to the Marienstiftsgymnasium in Stettin. From 1629–1634he then studied philosophy and theology at the University of Strasbourg, where he was especially influenced by the teachings of Johann Conrad Dannhauer and Johann Schmidt, and later by those of Philipp Jakob Spener. After a ...
Go to Profile#4938
Gustav Adolf Deissmann
1866 - 1937 (71 years)
Gustav Adolf Deissmann was a German Protestant theologian, best known for his leading work on the Greek language used in the New Testament, which he showed was the koine, or commonly used tongue of the Hellenistic world of that time.
Go to Profile#4939
John Charles McQuaid
1895 - 1973 (78 years)
John Charles McQuaid, C.S.Sp. , was the Catholic Primate of Ireland and Archbishop of Dublin between December 1940 and January 1972. He was known for the unusual amount of influence he had over successive governments.
Go to Profile#4940
Claus Harms
1778 - 1855 (77 years)
Claus Harms was a German clergyman and theologian. Life Harms was born at Fahrstedt in Schleswig, and in his youth worked in his father's mill. At the University of Kiel he repudiated the prevailing rationalism and under the influence of Schleiermacher became a fervent Evangelical preacher, first at Lunden , and then at Kiel .
Go to Profile#4941
Valentin Ernst Löscher
1673 - 1749 (76 years)
Valentin Ernst Löscher was a German orthodox Lutheran theologian. At the University of Wittenberg, where his father was professor of theology, he gave his attention mainly to philology and history, but out of respect to his father's wish he selected a theological subject for his master's dissertation, in which he opposed the Pietistic position. Subsequent study at Jena aroused his interest in church history. During travels undertaken at this time he formed the acquaintance of a number of influential anti-Pietistic theologians. In 1696 he began to lecture at Wittenberg on the origin of Deism and Pietism.
Go to Profile#4942
Benedict Welte
1805 - 1885 (80 years)
Benedict Welte was a German Catholic exegete. After studying at Tübingen and Bonn, where he made special studies in the exegesis of the Old Testament and in Oriental languages, he was ordained priest when twenty-eight years old. Soon after this he became assistant lecturer at Tübingen, and in 1840 regular professor of Old Testament exegesis.
Go to Profile#4943
Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange
1877 - 1964 (87 years)
Réginald Marie Garrigou-Lagrange was a French Dominican friar, philosopher and theologian. Garrigou-Lagrange was a neo-Thomist theologian, recognized along with Édouard Hugon and Martin Grabmann as distinguished theologians of the 20th century. As professor at the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, he taught dogmatic and spiritual theology in Rome from 1909 to 1959. There he wrote The Three Ages of the Interior Life in 1938.
Go to Profile#4944
Noah Porter
1811 - 1892 (81 years)
Noah Thomas Porter III was an American Congregational minister, academic, philosopher, author, lexicographer and an outspoken anti-slavery activist. Porter Mountain, of the Adirondack Mountains, was named for him after he was the first to climb it in 1875. He was President of Yale College .
Go to Profile#4945
Muhammad Ahmad
1844 - 1885 (41 years)
Muhammad Ahmad bin Abdullah bin Fahal was a Sudanese religious and political leader. In 1881, he claimed to be the Mahdi, and led a successful war against Egyptian rule in Sudan which culminated in a remarkable victory over them in the Siege of Khartoum. He created a vast Islamic state extending from the Red Sea to Central Africa, and founded a movement that remained influential in Sudan a century later.
Go to Profile#4946
Cosmo Gordon Lang
1864 - 1945 (81 years)
William Cosmo Gordon Lang, 1st Baron Lang of Lambeth, was a Scottish Anglican prelate who served as Archbishop of York and Archbishop of Canterbury . His elevation to Archbishop of York, within 18 years of his ordination, was the most rapid in modern Church of England history. As Archbishop of Canterbury during the abdication crisis of 1936, he took a strong moral stance, his comments in a subsequent broadcast being widely condemned as uncharitable towards the departed king.
Go to Profile#4947
Hans Asmussen
1898 - 1968 (70 years)
Hans Christian Asmussen was a German Evangelical and Lutheran theologian. Asmussen was a pastor in Altona, Hamburg. He was removed from office by the Nazis because of his activity in the Reich Fraternal Council of the Confessing Church. He was jailed several times before 1945. He was co-author of the protest "Word and Affirmation of Altona Pastors amid the Misery and Confusion of Public Life" , which rejected a pact with National Socialism and thus became a preliminary step toward the theological declaration of the Barmen Confessional Synod. From 1945 to 1948, Asmussen presided over the E...
Go to Profile#4948
Adalbert Merx
1838 - 1909 (71 years)
Adalbert Merx was a German Protestant theologian and orientalist. Biography He studied at the University of Jena, where he became an associate professor in 1869. Subsequently, he was a full professor of philosophy at the University of Tübingen, and in 1873 a professor of theology at the University of Giessen. From 1875 till his death he was a professor of theology of the University of Heidelberg. In the course of his researches he made several journeys in the East.
Go to Profile#4949
Michael Sars
1805 - 1869 (64 years)
Michael Sars was a Norwegian theologian and biologist. Biography Sars was born in Bergen, Norway. He studied natural history and theology at Royal Frederick University from 1823 and completed a cand.theol. degree in 1828. For several years he taught at a number of different schools, firstly in Christiania and then in Bergen. In 1831 he was appointed vicar to Kinn Church on the Norwegian north-west coast; eight years later he transferred to Manger, just north of Bergen. Finally, in 1854 he was named professor of zoology at the University of Oslo where he remained for the rest of his life. He died in 1869.
Go to Profile#4950
Saint Christopher
300 - 251 (-49 years)
Saint Christopher is venerated by several Christian denominations as a martyr killed in the reign of the 3rd-century Roman emperor Decius , or alternatively under the emperor Maximinus Daia . There appears to be confusion due to the similarity in names "Decius" and "Daia". Churches and monasteries were named after him by the 7th century.
Go to Profile