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).
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List of the most influential people in Theology,
#1001
Mark McIntosh
#84564
Overall Influence
1960 - 2021 (61 years)
Mark Allen McIntosh was an American Episcopal priest and theologian. He specialized in systematic theology, historical theology, and the history of Christian spirituality, engaging especially with Christian mysticism. From 2014 until his death, he was Professor of Christian Spirituality at Loyola University Chicago. He was previously, from 2009 to 2014, the Van Mildert Professor of Divinity at Durham University and a Canon Residentiary of Durham Cathedral.
Go to Profile#1002
Göran Larsson
#124604
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Göran Larsson is a Swedish Theologian, ordained in the Church of Sweden and best known for his knowledge about and contacts with Judaism. Life Larsson studied theology at Lund University receiving his Bachelor of Theology in 1973 and his Ph.D. in 1980. He was the director of the Swedish Theological Institute in Jerusalem 1979-1993 and senior research fellow at the University of Chicago Divinity School 1991–1992. He has published several books and articles about the relationship between Christianity and Judaism.
Go to Profile#1003
Peter O'Brien
#92428
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (89 years)
Peter Thomas O'Brien is an Australian clergyman, missionary and New Testament scholar. He has written commentaries on Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, Philemon, and Hebrews as well as books and articles on aspects of the thought the apostle Paul.
Go to Profile#1004
Mary Grey
#41478
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Mary Cecilia Grey is a Roman Catholic ecofeminist liberation theologian in the United Kingdom. She edited the journal Ecotheology for 10 years. She has previously been a professor teaching pastoral theology at the University of Wales, Lampeter; contemporary theology at the University of Southampton, La Sainte Union, and St Mary's University, Twickenham; and feminism and Christianity at the Catholic University of Nijmegen in the Netherlands.
Go to Profile#1005
Stanley N. Gundry
#86053
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (87 years)
Stanley Norman Gundry is an American evangelical theologian, seminary professor, publisher, and author. He served as series editor for the Zondervan "Counterpoints" series, which present multiple views on a variety of theological topics.
Go to Profile#1006
Christian Schaller
#97698
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (57 years)
Christian Schaller is a German Roman Catholic theologian from Munich. In June 2013, he was co-recipient, with Richard A. Burridge, of the Ratzinger Prize. Life Schaller was born in Munich in 1967. He studied at the faculty of theology of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. Already during his diploma thesis , he dealt with one aspect of the theology of Joseph Ratzinger, soon to be Benedict XVI: The Eucharistic Ecclesiology in the context of the sacramentality of the Church was the title of the paper presented by Gerhard Ludwig Müller.
Go to Profile#1007
Józef Tischner
#17043
Overall Influence
1931 - 2000 (69 years)
Józef Stanisław Tischner was a Polish priest and philosopher. The first chaplain of the trade union, "Solidarity" . Life Tischner was born in Stary Sącz to a Góral family and grew up in the village Łopuszna in the south east of Poland. He studied at Jagiellonian University in Kraków. In the 1970s he became an important writer of the opposition movement against the socialist government of the People's Republic of Poland. In 1980s he was considered the semi-official chaplain of the Solidarity movement, and was praised by Pope John Paul II.
Go to Profile#1008
Marian Hillar
#58050
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (86 years)
Marian Hillar is an American philosopher, theologian, linguist, and scientist. He is a recognized authority on Michael Servetus and together with classicist and political theorist, C. A. Hoffman, translated the major works of Michael Servetus from Latin into English for the first time. He identified the radical search for truth and the right for freedom of conscience as Servetus' main legacies, rather than his theology and scientific discovery. He studied the influence of Servetus in the world and the development and ideas of the Socinian movement in the 16th and 17th centuries, precursors of the Enlightenment and modern era.
Go to Profile#1009
André Manaranche
#104428
Overall Influence
1927 - 2020 (93 years)
André Manaranche was a French priest, theologian, and spiritual writer. Biography Born into a peasant family from Auvergne who moved into the Paris suburbs, Manaranche felt called to the priesthood early on. He began his studies at a seminary in Versailles and was ordained on 29 June 1951. He was then sent to the Institut Catholique de Paris for higher studies, and defended a thesis titled Communauté et société dans l'Eglise, inspired by the works of Ernst Troeltsch.
Go to Profile#1010
Dave Armstrong
#78041
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Dave Armstrong is an American Catholic apologist, author, and blogger. His blog, which includes material from his previous website, contains more than 2500 articles defending Christianity. It is award-winning and has had over two million visitors. He has written over 18 books, including The Catholic Answer Bible.
Go to Profile#1011
Thomas Joseph White
#88336
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
Thomas Joseph White, O.P., is an American Roman Catholic priest and theologian. On September 14, 2021, he succeeded Michał Paluch, OP, as rector of the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas in Rome .
Go to Profile#1012
Conrad Hyers
#35739
Overall Influence
1933 - 2013 (80 years)
Merritt Conrad Hyers was an American historian of religion and ordained Presbyterian minister. He taught for many years at Gustavus Adolphus College, and wrote multiple books on humor in religion and on Zen Buddhism.
Go to Profile#1013
Tjitze Baarda
#109321
Overall Influence
1932 - 2017 (85 years)
Tjitze Baarda was a Dutch professor of theology and Religious Sciences. He spent his career at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and Utrecht University. He specialized in the four gospels of the New Testament.
Go to Profile#1014
William A. Beardslee
#72650
Overall Influence
1916 - 2001 (85 years)
William A. Beardslee was a professional theologian who made major contributions to the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible. As a member of the National Council of Churches, Professor Beardslee spent 16 years helping translate ancient texts to update the Bible. The groups work resulted in the New Revised Standard Version, published in 1990, which replaced the 1952 Revised Standard Version. He was professor of religion at Emory University until his retirement in 1984. After his retirement, he spent his last 16 years as a voluntary director of the Process and Faith Program at the Claremon...
Go to Profile#1015
George Riashi
#49201
Overall Influence
1933 - 2012 (79 years)
George Riashi was the Greek Melkite Catholic bishop of Melkite Greek Catholic Archeparchy of Tripoli and all North Lebanon. Life George Riashi was one of nine children of Khattar and Zahia Riashi. Until 1948 he attended the local school and then moved to the Saint John's Basilian Seminary. Until 1953, he remained in the Basilian seminary and made his temporal vows. His religious name was Athanasius, according to Athanasius of Alexandria. Riashi started his religious studies to become a priest in 1955 in the Basilian Chouerite Order's Mar Yohanna Seminary in Khenchara and later in Saint Joseph University in Beirut in the American University of Beirut.
Go to Profile#1016
James Haire
#70429
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
The Reverend Professor Ian James Mitchell Haire AC KSJ is a theologian and Christian minister of religion. He is emeritus professor of Theology of Charles Sturt University, Canberra, Australia and past executive director of the Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture. He was formerly the fourth president of the National Council of Churches in Australia and the ninth president of the Uniting Church in Australia.
Go to Profile#1017
Hans-Reinhard Koch
#84836
Overall Influence
1929 - 2018 (89 years)
Hans-Reinhard Koch was a German Roman Catholic prelate. Ordained to the priesthood in 1955, he served as titular bishop of Mediana and as auxiliary bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Erfurt, Germany, from 1985 to 2004.
Go to Profile#1018
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#1019
John Bowden
#89742
Overall Influence
1935 - 2010 (75 years)
John Stephen Bowden was an English Anglican priest, publisher, and theologian. Life Born on 17 May 1935 in Halifax, Yorkshire, Bowden was educated at St Paul's School, London, and Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he came under the influence of Christopher Evans. He was ordained as a priest in the Diocese of Southwell in 1962.
Go to Profile#1020
Clemens Thoma
#68629
Overall Influence
1932 - 2011 (79 years)
Clemens Thoma was a Swiss theologian. He was professor of theology and Jewish studies and founder of the Institute for Jewish-Christian Studies at the University of Lucerne. He grew up as one of eleven children in a family in the Canton of St. Gallen. After theological studies at St. Augustin near Bonn and St. Gabriel in Vienna, he was ordained a priest. At the University of Vienna, he studied Judaism under Kurt Schubert.
Go to Profile#1021
Erwin Bischofberger
#72344
Overall Influence
1936 - 2012 (76 years)
Erwin Bischofberger, SJ was a Swedish Jesuit and medical practitioner. Life Bischofberger came from the Swiss Rhine Valley. He was ordained on 19 March 1961 in the Saint Eugenia Church in Stockholm to the priesthood and spent six years as a chaplain in Gothenburg. On 7 January 1968, he joined the Congregation of the Society of Jesus and in 1974 at the Sankt Georgen Graduate School of Philosophy and Theology in Frankfurt became Doctor of Theology with the work 'The moral requirements of faith on fundamental ethics of John Henry Newman'.
Go to Profile#1022
Andrew Wilson
#50459
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Andrew Wilson , full name Andrew Murray Wilson, is the Director of Scriptural Research and Professor of Scriptural Studies of the Unification Theological Seminary , the main seminary of the international Unification Church.
Go to Profile#1023
Ingolf U. Dalferth
#70765
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Ingolf Ulrich Dalferth is a philosopher of religion and theologian. His work is regarded as being on the methodological borderlines between analytic philosophy, hermeneutics and phenomenology, and he is a recognized expert in issues of contemporary philosophy, philosophy of religion, and philosophy of orientation.
Go to Profile#1024
Lonnie D. Kliever
#38838
Overall Influence
1932 - 2004 (72 years)
Dr Lonnie D. Kliever was chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the Southern Methodist University . Early life Kliever was born in Corn, Oklahoma, a small town in the southwestern part of the state; but spent most of his boyhood in Fort Worth. He suffered a severe childhood case of rickets brought on by a calcium deficiency. This stunted his growth, he stood well under 5 feet tall.
Go to Profile#1025
Wentzel van Huyssteen
#81267
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
J. Wentzel van Huyssteen was a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary from 1992-2014. His official position was the James I. McCord Professor of Theology and Science. Born in South Africa, he was ordained as part of the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa. He received his MA in philosophy from the Stellenbosch University in South Africa, and his PhD in philosophical theology from the Free University of Amsterdam. His areas of expertise are theology and science as well as religion and scientific epistemology. He was on the editorial board for the American Journal of Theology and Philoso...
Go to Profile#1026
Dieudonné Nzapalainga
#27563
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (57 years)
Dieudonné Nzapalainga, CSSp is a Central African Catholic cardinal, the Archbishop of Bangui and a member of the Congregation of the Holy Spirit. Nzapalainga served as the apostolic administrator of the Archdiocese of Bangui from 2009 until mid-2012 when Pope Benedict XVI appointed him as its metropolitan archbishop; since 2013 he has served as the President of the Central African Episcopal Conference.
Go to Profile#1027
Eckhard J. Schnabel
#84052
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Eckhard J. Schnabel is a German evangelical theologian and professor of the New Testament. He is the author of numerous scholarly books, Bible commentaries, specialist articles and lexical contributions.
Go to Profile#1028
Wolfgang Achtner
#96647
Overall Influence
1957 - 2017 (60 years)
Wolfgang Achtner was a theologist who played a key role as an ambassador for the science-and-religion dialogue in Germany. Career Achtner studied systematic theology and the Old Testament in Mainz, Göttingen, and Heidelberg. His dissertation focused on the science-and-religion dialogue in the work of Thomas F. Torrance. He then undertook a one-year research fellowship in Heidelberg. While a parish minister in Mainz, he earned an additional degree in mathematics.
Go to Profile#1029
Diana L. Hayes
#82541
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Diana L. Hayes is an African-American Catholic theologian specializing in womanism and Black theology. The first African-American woman to earn a pontifical doctorate in theology, she is professor emerita of systematic theology at Georgetown University.
Go to Profile#1030
Gerald Pillay
#53062
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Gerald John Pillay is a South African theologian and ecclesiastical historian. He was vice chancellor and rector of Liverpool Hope University in England from 2003 until the end of 2022. Early life and education Pillay was born on 21 December 1953 in Natal in South Africa. His ancestors had come from India to the then British colony of Natal, and he grew up in Durban under apartheid. He studied at the University of Durban-Westville , graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1975, a Bachelor of Divinity degree in 1978, and a Doctor of Theology degree in 1985. He also studied philosophic...
Go to Profile#1031
Peter Skov-Jakobsen
#87347
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Peter Henrik Skov-Jakobsen is a Danish bishop and theologian. Since 2009 he has been the sixth bishop of the Diocese of Copenhagen and consequently the primus inter pares of the Church of Denmark. Education Skov-Jakobsen graduated from St. Canute High School in Odense in 1979, which was followed by two years of study in German. In 1992 he completed a Masters of Arts in Theological Understanding of Industrial Society at the University of Hull. This happened while he was studying theology at the University of Copenhagen. In July 1993, after completion of his studies, he became a Cand.theol.
Go to Profile#1032
Robert N. Schaper
#83387
Overall Influence
1922 - 2007 (85 years)
Robert Newell Schaper was an American evangelical preacher and theologian who served as dean of the chapel and Arthur DeKruyter/Christ Church Oak Brook Professor of Preaching and Practical Theology at Fuller Theological Seminary.
Go to Profile#1033
James Leo Garrett Jr.
#89209
Overall Influence
1925 - 2020 (95 years)
James Leo Garrett Jr. was an American theologian. He held the position of Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Theology at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas. Personal Garrett was born in Waco, Texas to James Leo Garrett Sr., a business teacher at Baylor University and his wife, Grace Hasseltine Jenkins Garrett. He was converted in 1935 and was baptized into membership at the Seventh and James Baptist Church in Waco. He was licensed and ordained to the gospel ministry by the First Baptist Church of Waco
Go to Profile#1034
Roland J. Teske
#73261
Overall Influence
1934 - 2015 (81 years)
Roland J. Teske, S.J. was a Roman Catholic priest member of the Jesuit order. Teske was also a medievalist and philosopher and Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Marquette University. He published several books about medieval philosophy and theology, and translated and prepared English translations of their work, specializing in St. Augustine's philosophical and religious views and the work of the later philosopher William of Auvergne, Bishop of Paris.
Go to Profile#1035
Eric W. Gritsch
#99358
Overall Influence
1931 - 2012 (81 years)
Eric W. Gritsch was an American Lutheran ecumenical theologian and Luther scholar. Early life and student years Gritsch was raised in a Lutheran pastor's family in Bernstein im Burgenland in Austria. His family was deeply affected by the Anschluss and the Second World War. His father died on a death march as a Russian prisoner of war, but Gritsch himself, who had been drafted into a Werwolf group, escaped capture by posing as a gypsy boy. He returned to Bernstein and graduated with Matura in 1950. The same year, he matriculated at the University of Vienna to study Protestant theology. In 1954 he received a Fulbright scholarship and came to Yale University for the academic year 1954/55.
Go to Profile#1036
Thomas G. Long
#86122
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Thomas Grier Long is the Bandy Professor of Preaching at Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. He received his BA degree from Erskine College in 1968, the Master of Divinity from Erskine Theological Seminary in 1971, and the Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1980. He began his career as a preacher at McElroy Memorial Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church near Atlanta, Georgia and since that time has taught at a number of seminaries, including Erskine, Columbia, Princeton, and Candler.
Go to Profile#1037
Wolfgang Feneberg
#74463
Overall Influence
1935 - 2018 (83 years)
Wolfgang Feneberg was a German Roman Catholic, later an Evangelical Lutheran theologian of the New Testament, ex-Jesuit and Parson of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria and Professor. Feneberg was the founder of the "Bibelschule in Israel".
Go to Profile#1038
Kenneth Grayston
#89539
Overall Influence
1914 - 2005 (91 years)
Kenneth Grayston was a British theologian. He is the author of Dying, We Live. A New Inquiry into the Death of Christ in the New Testament . Grayston was born in Sheffield, and was raised and educated in south London. He studied chemistry at St John's College, Oxford, then theology at Wesley House, Cambridge. He was ordained as a Methodist minister in 1942. In 1944, he was appointed assistant director of broadcasting at the BBC, moving from there to become a tutor in New Testament at Didsbury Theological College, then a lecturer at the University of Bristol. He held the post of professor of theology there from 1965 until 1979.
Go to Profile#1039
Michael Bird
#84765
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (50 years)
Michael F. Bird is an Australian Anglican priest, theologian, and New Testament scholar. Biography In his teenage years, Bird was an atheist who saw Christianity, "as a way of oppressing people, a purely human construct.” After becoming a Christian, he has been a Baptist, Presbyterian, and an Anglican. He has recently been called by the ecumenical media platform Eternity a "heavy hitter" in the world of New Testament scholarship and Jesus's divinity.
Go to Profile#1040
Arenda Haasnoot
#103507
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (51 years)
Arenda Haasnoot is a Dutch theologian and preacher in the Protestant Church in the Netherlands . From 2007 to 2010 she was the Vice Chairman of the General Synod, the supreme governing body of the PKN. She is currently preacher at the Reformed Church, Rijnsburg.
Go to Profile#1041
Elżbieta Adamiak
#91664
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Elżbieta Adamiak is a Polish Roman Catholic theologian. Since 2016, she has been Professor of Fundamental Theology and Dogmatics at the Institute for Catholic Theology at the University of Koblenz-Landau.
Go to Profile#1042
Denton Lotz
#97576
Overall Influence
1939 - 2019 (80 years)
Denton Lotz was the general secretary of the Baptist World Alliance from 1988 to 2007 and the senior pastor of Tremont Temple Baptist Church in Boston from 2007 to 2017. Biography Lotz held a bachelor of sacred theology degree from Harvard Divinity School and a doctor of theology degree from the University of Hamburg. He was married to Janice Lotz.
Go to Profile#1043
Christian Gostečnik
#61866
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Christian Gostečnik, OFM is a Slovenian Roman Catholic priest of the Franciscan Order of Friars Minor, theologian, clinical psychologist and marriage-and-family therapist. He was dean of Faculty of Theology , while currently he is a director of Franciscan Family Institute in Ljubljana .
Go to Profile#1044
Michael Jensen
#84132
Overall Influence
Michael P. Jensen , is an Australian clergyman, author, and lecturer. He has served as the rector in the Anglican parish of St Mark's Church, Darling Point since 2013; and was formerly a professor of theology at Moore College, Sydney. He is a son of the former archbishop of Sydney, The Most Reverend Peter Jensen.
Go to Profile#1045
Alexander Filipović
#32949
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (49 years)
Alexander Filipović is a German ethicist, focusing on media and the digital transformation. He is a professor for media ethics at the Munich School of Philosophy and co-director of the Center for Media Ethics and Digital Society. Filipović serves as co-editor of the media science journal Communicatio Socialis and coordinates the German media ethics network Medienethik.
Go to Profile#1046
José María Vigil
#43279
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
José María Vigil Gallego is a Latin American theologian who has played a significant role in the fields of liberation theology and spirituality, the theology of religious pluralism and the emergence of new paradigms. He has been a Claretian missionary since 1964 and a Catholic priest since 1971. He is a naturalised Nicaraguan and currently lives in Panama. He is known for his numerous writings, his editorial and online activity, his service to the Association of Theologians of the Third World , the coordination of Koinonia Services and the International Latin American Agenda, his theology of ...
Go to Profile#1047
Arne Palmqvist
#85223
Overall Influence
1921 - 2003 (82 years)
Per Olof Arne Palmqvist, . was a Swedish theologian, Bishop of the Diocese of Härnösand between 1967 and 1975 and of the Diocese of Västerås between 1975 and 1988. After studies at Uppsala University Palmqvist became Licentiate of Divinity in 1950, Doctor of Divinity in 1955 and docent of ecclesiastical history in 1955. He was ordained as priest in the Church of Sweden 1956 in Uppsala. From 1959 teacher at the Stockholm Institute of Theology where he was prorector from 1965. Elected as bishop of the Diocese of Härnösand in 1967. He left this position after being elected as bishop of the Diocese of Västerås in 1975.
Go to Profile#1048
George W. Knight III
#84377
Overall Influence
1931 - 2021 (90 years)
George William Knight III was an ordained minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. He was a theologian, author, preacher, churchman, and adjunct professor of New Testament at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Taylors, South Carolina. Formerly, he was the founding Dean and Professor of New Testament at Knox Theological Seminary. Prior to his appointment at Knox Theological Seminary, he taught New Testament and New Testament Greek at Covenant Theological Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri. As a pastor, he planted Covenant Presbyterian Church in Naples, Florida and has served nu...
Go to Profile#1049
Roman Malek
#82905
Overall Influence
1951 - 2019 (68 years)
Roman Malek was a Polish-born German professor and sinologist. Biography Born in Bytów, Polish People's Republic, Malek entered the Society of the Divine Word in 1969. He studied philosophy, theology, and comparative religions, completing a doctorate in Sinology and a Habilitationsschrift on the Chinese theologian Wu Leichuan , both at the University of Bonn. Malek was a professor of philosophy and religious sciences at SVD Saint Augustin University of Philosophy and Theology and a sinology professor at the University of Bonn.
Go to Profile#1050
Erwin Josef Ender
#86133
Overall Influence
1937 - 2022 (85 years)
Erwin Josef Ender was a German prelate of the Catholic Church who spent his career in the diplomatic service of the Holy See. He was an archbishop and had the rank of nuncio since 1990. Biography Erwin Josef Ender was born on 7 September 1937 in Steingrund in Lower Silesia Province . He spent his childhood there until the end of World War II when the region became part of Poland. The German population of Silesia was relocated and from 1945 on his family lived in Lüdinghausen in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia.
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