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 Theology,
#2201
Johann Faber of Heilbronn
1504 - 1558 (54 years)
Johann Faber of Heilbronn, also known as Johannes Fabri , was a controversial 16th century Catholic preacher. He was born in Heilbronn. At the age of sixteen he entered the Dominican Order and made his ecclesiastical studies in the convent at Wimpfen. Little is known about his early preaching, but in 1534 he was invited to preach in the cathedral of Augsburg, but owing to the Lutheran tendencies of the time, and the strong anti-Catholic feeling which arose from it, the Catholic clergy were forbidden to preach, and his usefulness in Augsburg was of short duration.
Go to Profile#2202
Samuel A. Eliot
1862 - 1950 (88 years)
Samuel Atkins Eliot II was an American Unitarian minister. In 1898 the American Unitarian Association elected him secretary but in 1900 the position was redesignated as president and Eliot served in that office from inception to 1927, significantly expanding the association's activities and consolidating denominational power in its administration.
Go to Profile#2203
Charles Neaves, Lord Neaves
1800 - 1876 (76 years)
Charles Neaves, Lord Neaves FRSE was a Scottish advocate, judge, theologian and writer. He served as Solicitor General , as a judge of the Court of Session, the supreme court of Scotland , and as Rector of the University of St Andrews .
Go to Profile#2204
Benedictus Figulus
1567 - 1619 (52 years)
Benedictus Figulus of Utenhofen was a German alchemist, publisher, and Rosicrucian. He was an editor of Paracelsian texts and an important representative of Paracelsianism in the early 17th century.
Go to Profile#2205
José de Sigüenza
1544 - 1606 (62 years)
José de Sigüenza was a monk of the Order of Saint Jerome , historian , poet and theologian. He was the prior of the monastery of El Escorial, where he served as both librarian and historian. He is best known for his works on ecclesiastical history, in particular his History of the Order of St. Jerome , which discusses in detail the construction of El Escorial. He also wrote a work on the life of Saint Jerome, published in 1595. He left unfinished a book on the life of Jesus that goes only as far as the adoration of the shepherds and was not printed until 1916 in three books.
Go to Profile#2206
Marco Vigerio della Rovere
1446 - 1516 (70 years)
Marco Vigerio della Rovere was an Italian bishop and cardinal of the Catholic Church. Biography Emmanuele Vigerio della Rovere was born in Savona in 1446, the son of Urbano Vigerio and Nicoletta Grosso della Rovere, a niece of Pope Sixtus IV.
Go to Profile#2207
Peter Sterry
1613 - 1672 (59 years)
Peter Sterry was an English independent theologian, associated with the Cambridge Platonists prominent during the English Civil War era. He was chaplain to Parliamentarian general Robert Greville, 2nd Baron Brooke and then Oliver Cromwell, a member of the Westminster Assembly, and a leading radical Puritan preacher attached to the English Council of State. He was made fun of in Hudibras.
Go to Profile#2208
Ralph Niger
1140 - Present (886 years)
Ralph Niger, Latin Radulphus Niger or Radulfus Niger, anglicized Ralph the Black , was an Anglo-French theologian and one of the English chroniclers. He was from Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk, and became Archdeacon of Gloucester.
Go to Profile#2209
Jacques Merlin
Jacques Merlin was a French theologian and book editor, best remembered for his pioneering two volume collection of church councils, the Quatuor concilia generalia printed in 1524. Jacques was born in Saint-Victurnien. He became a doctor of theology at the College of Navarre in 1499. He then taught divinity at Limoges Cathedral.
Go to Profile#2210
Joseph A. Johnson Jr.
1914 - 1979 (65 years)
Joseph Andrew Johnson Jr. was an African-American theologian. He was a professor of New Testament at the Interdenominational Theological Center and Fisk University, and a bishop of the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church in Mississippi and Louisiana.
Go to Profile#2211
John Millott Ellis
1831 - 1894 (63 years)
John Millott Ellis was a 19th-century abolitionist minister and intellectual who served as acting President of Oberlin College in 1871. He was a professor of philosophy at Oberlin from 1866 to 1896.
Go to Profile#2212
Candidus of Fulda
770 - 845 (75 years)
Candidus of Fulda was a Benedictine scholar of the ninth-century Carolingian Renaissance, a student of Einhard, and author of the vita of his abbot at Fulda, Eigil. Biography He received his first instruction from the learned Eigil, Abbot of Fulda, 818-822. Abbot Ratgar sent the gifted scholar to Einhard at the court of Charlemagne, where he most probably learned the art he employed later in decorating with pictures the western apse of St. Salvator, the so-called Ratgerbasilica, to which, in 819, the remains of Saint Boniface were transferred. When Rabanus Maurus was made abbot , Candidus may have succeeded him as head of the monastic school of Fulda.
Go to Profile#2213
Cecil Weir
1897 - 1995 (98 years)
Cecil James Mullo Weir was a Scottish academic and theologian, who was Professor of Hebrew and Semitic Languages at the University of Glasgow from 1937 until 1968. Life Weir was born in Edinburgh, Scotland on 4 December 1897. He was educated at the Royal High School, Edinburgh, with his university studies at the University of Edinburgh being interrupted by service with the British Expeditionary Force in the First World War between 1917 and 1919 in France, Belgium and in Germany. After the war, he returned to university and was awarded a first-class Master of Arts degree in classics 1923. He obtained a further first-class degree in Semitic Languages in 1925.
Go to Profile#2214
Boverius
1568 - 1638 (70 years)
Giovanni Boveri was an Italian jurist, who became a Capuchin Friar Minor, taking the name Zacharias. He is known as a historian and theologian. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia he was a “man of great learning not only as an historian, but as a controversial writer”.
Go to Profile#2215
Felix Fabri
1441 - 1502 (61 years)
Felix Fabri was a Swiss Dominican theologian. He left vivid and detailed descriptions of his pilgrimages to Palestine and also in 1489 authored a book on the history of Swabia, entitled Historia Suevorum.
Go to Profile#2216
Samuel Drew
1765 - 1833 (68 years)
Samuel Drew was a British Methodist theologian. A native of Cornwall, England, he was nicknamed the "Cornish metaphysician" for his works on the human soul, the nature of God, and the deity of Christ. He also wrote on historical and biographical themes.
Go to Profile#2217
Jacobus Zaffius
1534 - 1618 (84 years)
Jacobus Hendriksz Zaffius also known as Saffius or Saffio , was a Catholic pastor in Haarlem. Biography He was born in Amsterdam where he later owned some property. From 1568 he was Prior of the Canons Regular monastery De Blinken in Heiloo. In May 1571 he became provost of the Grote Kerk, Haarlem. He witnessed the Satisfactie van Haarlem in 1577, as well as the Alteratie of Amsterdam on 26 May, 1578. Three days after this, Calvinists plundered the Grote Kerk and two years later Zaffius went to jail for refusing to turn over Catholic property to the Haarlem city council. William the Silent granted him amnesty, and it was on this occasion that he made his donation to the Frans Loenenhofje.
Go to Profile#2218
Robert Arnot
1744 - 1808 (64 years)
Robert Arnot was a Scottish Presbyterian minister and professor of divinity in St Andrews University, who was Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1794. Early life Arnot studied and was licensed by Cupar Presbytery on 5 Sept 1769. He was ordained minister at the parish of Ceres, Fife on 30 August 1770, where he oversaw that parish's report for the Statistical Account of Scotland. He was elected clerk to the presbytery in December 1777. He resigned this post on 16 October 1792 to take up his post as professor of divinity at New College, . This had been achieved as a...
Go to Profile#2219
Ferdinand Geminian Wanker
1758 - 1824 (66 years)
Ferdinand Geminian Wanker was a German Roman Catholic moral theologian. Life Works Christliche Sittenlehre oder Unterricht vom Verhalten des Christen, um durch Tugend wahrhaft glücklich zu werden. 2 Bände. 1794. Band 1. Vierte Ausgabe. 1824. Band 2. Dritte Ausgabe. 1811.Vorlesungen über Religion nach Vernunft und Offenbarung. Für Akademiker und gebildete Christen. 1828Gesammelte Schriften. 4 Bände. 1830.
Go to Profile#2220
Giovanni Lorenzo d'Anania
1545 - 1609 (64 years)
Giovanni Lorenzo d'Anania or Gian Lorenzo d'Anania was an Italian geographer and theologian. Biography Little is known for certain of d'Anania's life. His dates of birth and death are uncertain. He was born in Taverna, a city in the province of Catanzaro in Sila Piccola. He later studied natural science, languages and theology, probably in Naples. He certainly lived there for a few years and served as the teacher of the Archbishop Mario Carafa. At Carafa's death on 11 September 1575, d'Anania returned to Taverna where he remained until his death .
Go to Profile#2221
Radulfus Ardens
1101 - 1200 (99 years)
Radulfus Ardens was a French theologian and early scholastic philosopher of the 12th century. He was born in Beaulieu, Poitou. He is known for his Summa de vitiis et virtutibus or Speculum universale . It is in 14 volumes and is a systematic work of theology and ethics.
Go to Profile#2222
Abu Bakr Ibn Sayyid al-Nās
1200 - 1261 (61 years)
Muhammad bin Ahmad bin Abdullah bin Muhammad bin Yahya bin Muhammad bin Muhammad bin Sayyid al-Nas al-Ya'mari, better known as Abu Bakr Ibn Sayyid al-Nās, was a Medieval Muslim theologian. He was the grandfather of Fatḥ al-Din Ibn Sayyid al-Nās, though he died before ever meeting his grandson.
Go to Profile#2223
John Beston
John Beston was an English theological writer, prior of the Carmelite convent at Bishop's Lynn, was doctor in theology both of Cambridge and Paris, and was highly esteemed as a theologian and a philosopher, and also as a preacher.
Go to Profile#2224
Henry Highton
1816 - 1874 (58 years)
Henry Highton was an English schoolmaster and clergyman, Principal of Cheltenham College, known also as a scientific and theological writer. Life He was born at Leicester, the eldest son of Henry Highton. He spent five years at Rugby School, under Thomas Arnold, and matriculated at The Queen's College, Oxford, 13 March 1834. After leaving school, he continued on close terms with Arnold. Highton proceeded B.A. in 1837 , obtaining a first-class in classics, and was Michel fellow of his college in 1840–1. At this period he was tutor to Henry John Stephen Smith, and curate of St Ebbe's Church, Ox...
Go to Profile#2225
Ibn Abbad al-Rundi
1333 - 1390 (57 years)
Ibn Abbad al-Rundi was one of the leading Sufi theologianss of his time who was born in Ronda. Attracted to Morocco by the famous madrasahs, Ibn Abbad emigrated there at an early age. He spent most of his life in Morocco, living in different cities , and was buried in Bab al-Futuh cemetery in Fes.
Go to Profile#2226
Rodrigo Sánchez de Arévalo
1404 - 1470 (66 years)
Rodrigo Sánchez de Arévalo was a Spanish churchman, historian and political theorist. A learned Spanish bishop, after studying law at Salamanca for ten years and there graduating as Doctor, he became secretary to John II of Castile, and Henry IV of Castile. They employed him as envoy on various missions, notably to the Holy See apropos of the Council of Basle, whose conciliarist theories he opposed. While on a mission to the Holy Roman Empire, he was addressed in a letter by Nicholas of Cusa setting forth the latter's theory of explicatio Petri, the unfolding of the Church from Peter.
Go to Profile#2227
Dawson Dawson-Walker
1868 - 1934 (66 years)
Dawson Dawson-Walker was a British Church of England clergyman, classicist, theologian and academic. From 1911 to 1919, he was Principal of St John's College, Durham. From 1919 to his death in 1934, he was Van Mildert Professor of Divinity at Durham University and a Canon Residentiary of Durham Cathedral.
Go to Profile#2228
Justus Menius
1499 - 1558 (59 years)
Justus Menius was a German Lutheran pastor and Protestant reformer whose name is Latinized from Jost or Just Menig. Early life Menius was born in Fulda to poor but respectable parents. Entering the University of Erfurt in 1514, he received his bachelor's degree in 1515 and his master's degree in 1516. At this time, in association with the keen humanists Conrad Mutian, Crotus Rubeanus, and Eoban Hess, Menius became more sceptical. Moving to Wittenberg in 1519, he became evangelical under the teaching of Philipp Melanchthon and the preaching of Martin Luther.
Go to Profile#2229
Girolamo Dandini
1552 - 1634 (82 years)
Girolamo Dandini was an Italian Jesuit and academic. Life He was born in Cesena. With Juan Maldonado he was the first Jesuit professor in Paris, at the Collège de Clermont; there he taught François de Sales. Later he was professor of theology at Perugia.
Go to Profile#2230
Henry Pendleton
Henry Pendleton was an English churchman, a theologian and controversialist. Life He was educated at Brasenose College, Oxford, where he received the degree of Doctor of Divinity, 18 July 1552. Though he had preached against Lutheranism in Henry VIII's reign, he conformed under Edward VI and was appointed by Lord Derby as an itinerant Protestant preacher. In 1552 he received the living of Blymhill, Staffordshire.
Go to Profile#2231
Chrysostomos I of Athens
1868 - 1938 (70 years)
Chrysostomos A , born Chrysostomos Papadopoulos , was Metropolitan of Athens from 8 March until 31 December 1923, when he became the first Archbishop of Athens and All Greece, serving until his death on 22 October 1938.
Go to Profile#2232
Charles Abel Heurtley
1806 - 1895 (89 years)
Charles Abel Heurtley was an English theologian. Heurtley was educated at Louth Grammar School and Corpus Christi College, Oxford, of which college he was a Fellow from 1832 to 1841 when he became Rector of Fenny Compton. He was Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Oxford from 1853 until his death.
Go to Profile#2233
Everard Digby
1550 - 1605 (55 years)
Everard Digby was an English academic theologian, expelled as a Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge for reasons that were largely religious. He is known as the author of a 1587 book, written in Latin, that was the first work published in England on swimming; and also as a philosophical teacher, writer and controversialist. The swimming book, De Arte Natandi, was a practical treatise following a trend begun by the archery book Toxophilus of Roger Ascham, of Digby's own college.
Go to Profile#2234
Edward Jones
1641 - 1703 (62 years)
Edward Jones , was a Welsh Anglican bishop who served as Bishop of Cloyne and Bishop of St Asaph. Jones was born in July 1641 at Llwyn Ririd, near Montgomery, Powys. He was the son of Richard Jones, by Sarah, daughter of John Pyttes of Marrington. He was educated at Westminster School, whence he was elected in 1661 to Trinity College, Cambridge. He graduated B.A. in 1664, and M.A. in 1668, and was made fellow of his college in 1667. Going to Ireland as domestic chaplain to the Duke of Ormonde, the lord-lieutenant, he was appointed master of Kilkenny College, where Jonathan Swift was his pupil....
Go to Profile#2235
Antonius Thysius the Elder
1565 - 1640 (75 years)
Antonius Thysius was a Dutch Reformed theologian, professor at the University of Harderwijk and University of Leiden. Life He was born on 9 August 1565 in Antwerp, and received a classical education under Bonaventura Vulcanius. In 1581 he followed his teacher to Leiden, where he studied theology under Lambertus Danaeus; Danaeus left for Ghent after a year, and Thysius spent some years travelling, to Frankenthal, Geneva where he was taught by Theodore Beza, then other Swiss cities, and Strasbourg. He was for four years in Heidelberg, and in 1589 went on to England, where he heard in Oxford and Cambridge William Whitaker and John Rainolds.
Go to Profile#2236
John Ireland
1435 - 1500 (65 years)
John Ireland or Irland , also known as Johannes de Irlandia, was a Scottish theologian and diplomat. Life A native of Scotland , Ireland was first at St Andrews University but left in 1459 without a degree and joined the University of Paris as student and teacher. According to his own testimony he remained in France, "neare the tyme of thretty yere". Records of the Sorbonne suggest he came from a St Andrews family, although Perth has been suggested as his birthplace. Ireland settled in Paris, and became a doctor of the Sorbonne. As Johannes de Hirlandia he served as Rector of the University of...
Go to Profile#2237
Ahmed Zouaoui
1450 - 1488 (38 years)
Ahmed Zouaoui was born in Algiers. He was a theologian and Maliki Mufti of Algiers. Teachers Ahmed Zouaoui had the Imam Abd al-Rahman al-Tha'alibi as a guide and teacher in Malikism and Sufism. He was also a disciple for several scholars as Al-Sakhawi and others.
Go to Profile#2238
Gerardus Odonis
1285 - 1348 (63 years)
Geraldus Odonis, Guiral Ot in Occitan, was a French theologian and Minister General of the Franciscan Order. Life His name appears in medieval manuscripts as Geraldus slightly more frequently than Gerardus. This form is also closer to the vernacular form Guiral Ot found in a poem by the Toulouse troubadour Raimon de Cornet.
Go to Profile#2239
Arthur Cushman McGiffert
1861 - 1933 (72 years)
Arthur Cushman McGiffert , American theologian, was born in Sauquoit, New York, the son of a Presbyterian clergyman of Scots-Irish descent. Biography He graduated at Western Reserve College in 1882 and at Union Theological Seminary in 1885, studied in Germany in 1885–1887, and in Italy and France in 1888, and in that year received the degree of doctor of philosophy at Marburg. He was instructor and professor of church history at Lane Theological Seminary, and in 1893 became Washburn professor of church history in Union theological seminary, succeeding Philip Schaff. He became the 8th presid...
Go to Profile#2240
Alan of Lynn
1348 - 1401 (53 years)
Alan of Lynn , or Alanus de Lynna, was a famous English theologian of the first half of the fifteenth century. He flourished about 1420. He was born at Lynn in Norfolk, and studied philosophy and theology at Cambridge with much credit, taking the degree of Doctor of Divinity there. He afterwards returned to his native place, where he entered the order of the Carmelites, and spent the rest of his life. He died in Norwich, where he had lived for many years.
Go to Profile#2241
David van Goorle
1591 - 1612 (21 years)
David van Goorle was a Dutch philosopher and theologian, and one of the first modern atomists. Biography Van Goorle was the son of David van Goorle Sr., a Protestant refugee from Antwerp, who at the time of his birth was treasurer for stadtholder Adolf van Nieuwenaar. His uncle was Abraham Gorlaeus. His mother was a Frisian noblewoman, the daughter of admiral Doecke van Martena, known for his role in the Dutch and Frisian wars of independence. Although he called himself Ultrajectinus , he grew up with his maternal grandparents in their stins in the Frisian village of Cornjum.
Go to Profile#2242
Veit Dietrich
1506 - 1549 (43 years)
Veit Dietrich, also Vitus Theodorus or Vitus Diterichus, was a German Lutheran theologian, writer and a reformer. Life and work Veit Dietrich was born on 8 December 1506 in Nuremberg; his father was a shoemaker. The talent of the boy was soon recognized and patronage of a wealthy benefactor enabled him to attend high school at the University of Wittenberg. He enrolled in March 1522. In University Philipp Melanchthon recognized his talent and encouraged him.
Go to Profile#2243
Wenrich of Trier
1100 - 1081 (-19 years)
Wenrich of Trier was a German ecclesiastico-political writer of the eleventh century. Biography He was a canon at Verdun, and afterwards scholasticus at Trier. Sigebert of Gembloux calls him also Bishop of Vercelli, but the early documents of the diocese leave no place for him in the list of bishops.
Go to Profile#2244
Boniface of Brussels
1183 - 1260 (77 years)
Boniface of Brussels was a Catholic prelate who served as the Bishop of Lausanne from circa 1231 until 1239 when he resigned after agents of Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II assaulted him. His relics are housed at the Kapellekerk, and at La Cambre where he died.
Go to Profile#2245
John Forbes
1593 - 1648 (55 years)
John Forbes of Corse was a Scottish minister and theologian, one of the Aberdeen doctors, noted for his eirenic approach in church polity and opposition to the National Covenant. Life He was the second son of Patrick Forbes of Corse Castle, bishop of Aberdeen, by his marriage to Lucretia, a daughter of David Spens of Wormiston, Fife. He entered King's College, Aberdeen, in 1607. In 1612 he visited his exiled uncle John Forbes at Middelburg, and then went to the university of Heidelberg. There he studied theology under David Pareus. In 1615 he moved to Sedan and continued his studies under his kinsman Andrew Melville.
Go to Profile#2246
Arthur Faunt
1554 - 1591 (37 years)
Laurence Arthur Faunt was an English Jesuit theologian and missionary to Poland. Family background Arthur Faunt was the third son of William Faunt of Foston, Leicestershire, by his second wife, Jane, daughter of George Vincent of Peckleton, and widow of Nicholas Purefoy of Fenny Drayton. The family was Roman Catholic.
Go to Profile#2247
Balthazar Francolini
1650 - 1709 (59 years)
Balthazar Francolini was a Jesuit theologian. He was born in Fermo and became a professor of philosophy at the Gregorian University in Rome. He was an attritionist, holding that imperfect contrition was sufficient to receive the sacrament. He opposed the more rigorous heresy of Jansenism, writing Clericus Romanus Contra Nimium Rigorismum Munitus in 1707.
Go to Profile#2248
Jodok Mörlin
1490 - 1550 (60 years)
Jodok Mörlin, also known in Latin as Jodocus Morlinus or Maurus , was a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wittenberg, the Lutheran pastor of Westhausen bei Hildburghausen, and a Reformer. He is famed as one of the first witnesses, allies and participants of the Reformation and as the father of two Lutheran theologians, Joachim Mörlin and Maximilian Mörlin.
Go to Profile#2249
Frederik Christian von Haven
1727 - 1763 (36 years)
Frederik Christian von Haven was a Danish philologist and theologian who took part in the Danish expedition to Yemen. Biography Background and early life Frederik von Haven was born on 26 June 1728 in the rectory of Vester Skerninge on the Danish island of Funen, where his father Lambert von Haven was a priest, and christened on 3 July in the Church of Our Lady in Odense. His mother was Maren, née Wielandt. He had three sisters; he was especially close to Pernille Elisabeth von Haven, who never married.
Go to Profile#2250
Ahmad Ullah Maizbhandari
1826 - 1906 (80 years)
Syed Ahmad Ullah Maizbhandari was a Bengali Sufi saint and founder of the Maizbhandari Sufi order in Bengal. Ancestry Ahmad Ullah's ancestors were Syeds and originally migrated from Madinah to Gaur, the erstwhile capital of medieval Bengal, via Baghdad and Delhi. His great-great-grandfather, Hamid ad-Din, was the appointed Imam and Qadi of Gaur, but due to a sudden epidemic in the city, Hamid later migrated to Patiya in Chittagong District. Hamid's son, Syed Abdul Qadir, was made the imam of Azimnagar in modern-day Fatikchhari. He had two sons; Syed Ataullah and Syed Tayyab Ullah. The latter ...
Go to Profile