Search People Result | Academic Influence

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.

Search Influential People

Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Theology,

#2201

Augustin Gretillat

Augustin Gretillat

1837 - 1894 (57 years)

Augustin Gretillat was a Swiss Protestant pastor, theologian and professor of theology. He is the author of a “Systematic Theology”, of which four volumes appeared from 1885 to 1892, and he left unfinished a treatise on Christian morality which was to consist of three volumes. He succeeds John Calvin and Bénédict Pictet in the very short list of authors of complete treatises on dogmatic in the French language.

#2202

Albert Réville

1826 - 1906 (80 years)

Albert Réville was a distinguished French Protestant theologian, known for his 'extremist' liberal views. He is also known for being one of the first intellectuals to join the Dreyfusard cause when the Dreyfus Affair erupted in the 1890s.

#2203

Jakob Miller

1550 - 1597 (47 years)

Jakob Miller was a Catholic reformist theologian, provost and administrator of the diocese of Regensburg. Life Miller was born in Kißlegg, Allgäu. He studied at the Germanicum in Rome and in 1578 was made a cathedral-preacher in Konstanz, then on his deposition from that post in 1585 as visitor to the bishopric of Konstanz. From 1586 he was spiritual overseer of the diocese of Regensburg. In Regensburg Miller tried to set up a Jesuit college, wrote new diocesan constitutions and enforced the decisions of the Council of Trent in the diocese. In 1592 he was made the first mitred provost of Regensburg, since the bishop Philipp of Bavaria was still in his minority.

#2204

Henry Rogers

1806 - 1877 (71 years)

Henry Rogers was an English nonconformist minister and man of letters, known as a Christian apologist. Life He was third son of Thomas Rogers, a surgeon of St Albans, where he was born on 18 October 1806. He was educated at private schools and by his father, of congregationalist views. In his seventeenth year he was apprenticed to a surgeon at Milton-next-Sittingbourne, Kent; reading John Howe's The Redeemer's Tears wept over Lost Souls diverted his attention from surgery to theology. After study at Highbury College, Middlesex, he entered the congregationalist ministry in June 1829.

#2205

Joseph Jowett

1751 - 1813 (62 years)

Joseph Jowett was an English Anglican cleric and jurist. He was Fellow and Tutor of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, and Regius Professor of Civil Law at Cambridge University from 1782 to 1813. He was the uncle of William Jowett.

#2206

Joseph Putzer

1806 - 1894 (88 years)

Joseph Putzer was an Austrian Redemptorist theologian and canonist. Life He entered the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer and made his religious profession, 14 August 1856. Having finished his theological studies at Mautern, Austria, he was ordained 7 August 1859.

#2207

Ben-Zion Bokser

1907 - 1984 (77 years)

Ben-Zion Bokser was a major Conservative rabbi in the United States. Biography Bokser was born in Liuboml, then a part of Poland, and emigrated to the United States at the age of 13 in 1920. He attended City College of New York and Rabbi Isaac Elhanan Theological Seminary, followed by the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and Columbia University . He taught for many years as an adjunct professor of political science, Queens College, City University of New York.

#2208

Ibrahim al-Bajuri

1783 - 1860 (77 years)

Ibrāhīm ibn Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad al-Šāfiʿī al-Bājūrī was an Egyptian-Ottoman scholar, theologian and a dean of the al-Azhar University. A follower of Imam Al-Shafiʽi, he authored over 20 works and commentaries in sacred law, tenets of faith, Islamic estate division, scholastic theology, logic and Arabic.

#2209

Timotheus Kirchner

Timotheus Kirchner

1533 - 1587 (54 years)

Timotheus Kirchner was a Lutheran theologian, pastor, Protestant reformer, professor of theology and superintendent in Weimar. Life Kirchner was the son of a teacher. He attended school in Gotha, studied in Jena and Erfurt, and was the village priest at a young age.

#2210

Martin Boos

1762 - 1825 (63 years)

Martin Boos was a German Roman Catholic theologian. Life He was born at Huttenried in Bavaria. Orphaned at the age of four, he was reared by an uncle at Augsburg, who finally sent him to the University of Dillingen, where he studied under Sailer, Zimmer, and Weber. There he laid the foundation of the modest piety by which his whole life was distinguished. He had followed the extreme practices of asceticism as a penance for sin, all to no avail, as he believed, and then developed a doctrine of salvation by faith which came very near to pure Lutheranism. This he preached with great effect.

#2211

John Robinson

1575 - 1625 (50 years)

John Robinson was the pastor of the "Pilgrim Fathers" before they left on the Mayflower. He became one of the early leaders of the English Separatists called Brownists, and is regarded as one of the founders of the Congregational Church.

#2212

Peter of Limoges

1240 - 1306 (66 years)

Peter of Limoges was the author of A Moral Treatise on the Eye or On the Moral Eye , a popular guide for Catholic priests, composed at the University of Paris sometime in the 1270s or 1280s. The work depended heavily on Roger Bacon's earlier treatment of optics.

#2213

Niels Christian Gauslaa Danbolt

Niels Christian Gauslaa Danbolt

1900 - 1984 (84 years)

Niels Christian Gauslaa Danbolt was a Norwegian professor of medicine who was a specialist in skin diseases. Danbolt-Closs syndrome was named after him and Karl Philipp Closs. Danbolt was born in Bergen, Norway. He was the son of Ole Dominicus Danielsen and Gesine Gauslaa . He was the brother of the missionary priest Lars Johan Danbolt and theology professor Erling Danbolt. He was the uncle of professor Ole Danbolt Mjøs and professor Gunnar Danbolt . His sister Johanna Sophie Danbolt was married to Bishop Olav Hagesæther.

#2214

Johann Pfeffinger

Johann Pfeffinger

1493 - 1573 (80 years)

Johann Pfeffinger was a significant theologian and Protestant Reformer. His life and work Devoting himself to the religious life, Pfeffinger became an acolyte at Salzburg in 1515, and soon afterward was made subdeacon and deacon. Receiving a dispensation from the regulations concerning canonical age, he was ordained priest and stationed at Reichenhall, Saalfelden, and Passau, where his clerical activity soon found great approbation. Suspected of Lutheran heresy, he went to Wittenberg in 1523, where he was cordially welcomed by Martin Luther, Philip Melanchthon, and Bugenhagen.

#2215

Stephan Gerlach

Stephan Gerlach

1546 - 1612 (66 years)

Stephan Gerlach was a German Lutheran theologian. Gerlach was an extremely important figure in the second half of the 16th century. He was tasked with a special mission in Constantinople, namely to establish an alliance between Orthodoxy and Lutheranism against Catholicism. This mission failed, nevertheless, he signed the Brest Union.

#2216

Al-Qushayri

986 - 1072 (86 years)

'Abd al-Karīm ibn Hawazin Abū al-Qāsim al-Qushayrī al-Naysābūrī was an Arab Muslim scholar, theologian, jurist, legal theoretician, commentator of the Qur’an, muhaddith, grammarian, spiritual master, orator, poet, and an eminent scholar who mastered a number of Islamic sciences. Al-Qushayri, combined the routine instruction of a Shafi'i law specialist and Hadith expert with a solid slant to mysticism and ascetic lifestyle.

#2217

Edvard Sverdrup

1861 - 1923 (62 years)

Johan Edvard Sverdrup was a Norwegian educator, author and church leader. Sverdrup was one of the key theologians in the Church of Norway in the first few decades of the 1900s. Biography Sverdrup was born in Balestrand in Sogn og Fjordane, Norway. He was the son of Harald Ulrik Sverdrup . His father was a vicar and served as a member of the Norwegian Parliament. His uncle Johan Sverdrup founded the Liberal Party and became Prime Minister of Norway in 1884. His brother Jakob Sverdrup was Bishop of the Diecese of Bjørgvin and served as a member of the Norwegian Parliament. His brother ...

#2218

Ralph Bathurst

1620 - 1704 (84 years)

Ralph Bathurst, FRS was an English theologian and physician. Early life He was born in Hothorpe, Northamptonshire in 1620 and educated at King Henry VIII School, Coventry. He graduated with a B.A. degree from Trinity College, Oxford in 1638, where he had a family connection with the President, Ralph Kettell .

#2219

René-Joseph de Tournemine

1661 - 1739 (78 years)

René-Joseph de Tournemine was a French Jesuit theologian and philosopher. He founded the Mémoires de Trévoux, the Jesuit learned journal published from 1701 to 1767, and assailed Nicolas Malebranche with the charges of atheism and Spinozism.

#2220

Abu al-Barakat al-Nasafi

1240 - 1310 (70 years)

Abu al-Barakat al-Nasafi , was an eminent Hanafi scholar, Qur'an exegete , and a Maturidi theologian. He is perhaps best known for his Tafsir Madarik al-Tanzil wa Haqa'iq al-Ta'wil . He was one of the foremost figures of the classical period of Hanafi jurisprudence and one of the major scholars of the Maturidi school in the Sunni tradition, which developed in parallel with Hanafiyya, who made a tremendous contribution in the field of Islamic sciences in Central Asia, especially to the dissemination of the Hanafian order and teachings of the Maturidi school in the Islamic world and left a great...

#2221

Luis de Montesinos

1552 - 1620 (68 years)

Luis de Montesinos was a Spanish theologian. Nothing is known of Montesinos' childhood. As an adult, he joined the Dominican Order and studied philosophy and theology in several Spanish universities. He was known there for both his scholarship and for his piety. After receiving his degree, he began teaching philosophy at university level, eventually becoming the foremost exponent of Thomistic theology at the University of Alcalá. Because of his great ability in persuading and explaining, he was given the surname Doctor clarus. He possessed a singular charm of manner which secured for him at once love and respect.

#2222

Thomas Jones of Denbigh

Thomas Jones of Denbigh

1756 - 1820 (64 years)

Thomas Jones , called "Thomas Jones of Denbigh" to differentiate him from namesakes, was a Welsh Methodist clergyman, writer, editor and poet, active in North Wales. Life history Thomas Jones was born in 1756 at Aberchwiler in Denbighshire, but was educated at Caerwys and Holywell in Flintshire.

#2223

John Eugenikos

1380 - 1453 (73 years)

John Eugenikos was a late Byzantine cleric and writer. He was the brother of Mark Eugenikos, and like him an ardent opponent of the Union of the Churches. Originally a notary and nomophylax at the Patriarchate of Constantinople, his opposition to the Union saw him exiled to the Despotate of the Morea, where he died. John participated briefly in the Council of Florence that ratified the Union, and also travelled to Trebizond and Mesembria.

#2224

Nicolas Coeffeteau

Nicolas Coeffeteau

1574 - 1623 (49 years)

Nicolas Coeffeteau was a French theologian, poet and historian born at Saint-Calais. He entered the Dominican order and lectured on philosophy at Paris, being also ordinary preacher to Henry IV, and afterwards ambassador at Rome.

#2225

Urbanus Rhegius

Urbanus Rhegius

1489 - 1541 (52 years)

Urbanus Henricus Rhegius or Urban Rieger was a Protestant Reformer who was active both in Northern and Southern Germany in order to promote Lutheran unity in the Holy Roman Empire. He was also a popular poet. Martin Luther referred to him as the "Bishop of Lower Saxony".

#2226

John Arrowsmith

1602 - 1659 (57 years)

John Arrowsmith was an English theologian and academic. Life Arrowsmith was born near Gateshead and entered St John's College, Cambridge, in 1616. In 1623 he entered the fellowship of St Catherine Hall, Cambridge.

#2227

Walter Scott

1796 - 1861 (65 years)

Walter Scott was one of the four key early leaders in the Restoration Movement, along with Barton W. Stone, Thomas Campbell and Thomas' son Alexander Campbell. He was a successful evangelist and helped to stabilize the Campbell movement as it was separating from the Baptists.

#2228

Otto von Gerlach

1801 - 1849 (48 years)

Karl Friedrich Otto von Gerlach was a German theologian and pastor from Berlin. He was the youngest of five children of Carl Friedrich Leopold von Gerlach , first Lord Mayor of Berlin, and Agnes von Raumer , and brother of Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach and Ludwig Friedrich Leopold von Gerlach .

#2229

Samuel Petto

1624 - 1711 (87 years)

Samuel Petto was an English Calvinist, a Cambridge graduate, and an Independent Puritan clergyman who primarily ministered in Sudbury, Suffolk. He was a prolific theologian who made a notable contribution to the development of British covenant theology by describing the link between the covenant of works and the covenant of grace and also demonstrating the relationship between justification and covenant theology. Additionally, he wrote two catechisms and a book advocating lay preaching. He also had close ties with a radical political movement.

#2230

Johannes Wolleb

Johannes Wolleb

1589 - 1629 (40 years)

Johannes Wolleb was a Swiss Protestant theologian. He was a student of Amandus Polanus, and followed in the tradition of a Reformed scholasticism, a formal statement of the views arising from the Protestant Reformation.

#2231

Charles Woodruff Shields

1825 - 1904 (79 years)

Charles Woodruff Shields was an American theologian. Biography Charles Woodruff Shields was born in New Albany, Indiana on April 4, 1825. He graduated from the College of New Jersey in 1844 and at Princeton Theological Seminary in 1847.

#2232

Saint Ursula

400 - 385 (-15 years)

Ursula is a legendary Romano-British Christian saint. Her feast day in the pre-1970 Calendarium Romanum Generale is 21 October. There is little information about her and the anonymous group of holy virgins who accompanied and, on an uncertain date, were killed along with her at Cologne. They remain in the Roman Martyrology, although their commemoration does not appear in the simplified General Roman Calendar of the 1970 Missale Romanum.

#2233

Oliver Chase Quick

1885 - 1944 (59 years)

Oliver Chase Quick was an English theologian, philosopher, and Anglican priest. Early life and education Oliver Quick was born on 21 June 1885 in Sedbergh, Yorkshire, the son of the educationist Robert Hebert Quick and Bertha Parr. He was educated at Harrow School and studied classics and theology at Corpus Christi College, Oxford.

#2234

Josué de la Place

1596 - 1655 (59 years)

Josué de la Place was a Reformed theologian who was born at Saumur, France. He is known as the originator of the "mediate view" of the imputation of sin, whereby original sin is considered to be an inherent depravity in man. This view is opposed to the "federalist view", whereby the God immediately imputes original sin to all men, as a consequence of Adam's sin, and thus this original sin becomes the cause of actual sin.

#2235

Tobias Lohner

1619 - 1697 (78 years)

Tobias Lohner was an Austrian Jesuit theologian. Life He entered the Society of Jesus on 30 August 1637, at Landsberg am Lech, and spent his first years in the classroom, teaching the classics. Later at Dillingen, he was professor, first of philosophy for seven years, then of speculative theology for four years, and finally of moral theology. He was rector of the colleges of Lucerne and Dillingen and master of novices.

#2236

Alexander MacWhorter III

1822 - 1880 (58 years)

Alexander MacWhorter was an American theologian and author. Early life MacWhorter, the third of his name, was born in Newark, New Jersey on January 1, 1822. He was the only surviving child of Alexander C. MacWhorter and Frances C. G. MacWhorter. His paternal grandfather was fellow clergyman Alexander MacWhorter. He graduated from Yale College in 1842. He studied for three years in the Theological Department of Yale College, and was licensed to preach in 1844.

#2237

Georg Joachim Mark

1726 - 1774 (48 years)

Georg Joachim Mark or Georg Joachim Märk was a German theologian. He was born at Schwerin March 1, 1726; was educated at the University of Kiel; in 1745 entered the ministry; and in 1747 was appointed a member of the philosophical faculty of his alma mater. In 1752 he accepted a call as librarian to the prince Louis of Mecklenburg- Schwerin; in 1758, as professor ordinary of divinity to the University of Kiel; in 1766 he was honored with the degree of doctor of divinity. He died on 5 March 1774.

#2238

Pope Nicholas II

Pope Nicholas II

990 - 1061 (71 years)

Pope Nicholas II , otherwise known as Gerard of Burgundy, was the head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 24 January 1059 until his death in 27 July 1061. At the time of his election, he was bishop of Florence. During his Papacy, Nicholas II successfully expanded the influence of the papacy in Milan and southern Italy. He was also responsible for passing papal election reforms.

#2239

F. L. Cross

1900 - 1968 (68 years)

Frank Leslie Cross , usually cited as F. L. Cross, was an English patristics scholar and Anglican priest. He was the founder of the Oxford International Conference on Patristic Studies and editor of The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church . He was Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at the University of Oxford from 1944 to 1968.

#2240

Joseph Emerson

1821 - 1900 (79 years)

Joseph Emerson was an American minister and theologian. Emerson, son of Professor Ralph Emerson, D.D. and Eliza Emerson, was born on May 28, 1821, at Norfolk, Connecticut, where his father was at the time pastor of the Congregational church. In 1829 his father became Professor of Ecclesiastical History in Andover Theological Seminary, in Andover, Massachusetts, and he was prepared for college at Phillips Academy in that place. During his senior year at Yale College he was one of the editors of the Yale Literary Magazine. He graduated from Yale in 1841.

#2241

George Burman Foster

1858 - 1919 (61 years)

George Burman Foster was part of the faculty in the Divinity School at the University of Chicago under the leadership of William Rainey Harper. His views were often thought by his contemporaries to support scientific naturalistic and humanistic views that contradict a Baptist view. A friendship with Clarence Darrow shows that despite Foster's progressive views he still valued and respected the views of a traditional Christian community.

#2242

John Aikin

1713 - 1780 (67 years)

John Aikin was an English Unitarian scholar and theological tutor, closely associated with Warrington Academy, a prominent dissenting academy. Life Aikin was born in 1713 in London. His father, a linen-draper, came originally from Kirkcudbright, in southern Scotland. He was placed for a short time as French clerk in a mercantile house, but entered Kibworth Academy, then run by Philip Doddridge, for whom Aikin was the first pupil. He then went to Aberdeen University, where the anti-Calvinist opinions of the tutors gradually led him to Low Arianism, as it was then called, which afterwards became the distinguishing feature of the Warrington Academy.

#2243

Gordon Selwyn

1885 - 1959 (74 years)

Edward Gordon Selwyn was an English Anglican priest and theologian, who served as Warden of Radley College from 1913 to 1919; Rector of Red Hill, near Havant. He was Dean of Winchester from 1931 to 1958. He wrote sermons and other books and was the editor of the liberal Anglo-Catholic journal Theology during the first fourteen years of its existence, 1920–34.

#2244

Claude Chantelou

1617 - 1664 (47 years)

Claude Chantelou was a Benedictine Patristic scholar and writer. Having spent some time in the Order of Fontevrault, he left it to become a Benedictine in the Congregation of Saint-Maur, in which he made his profession, February 7, 1640, at Toulouse. When the General Chapter of 1651 ordained that two religious be entrusted with the preparation of a history of the congregation, Chantelou was one of the appointees, and from that time until his death resided at Saint-Germain-des-Prés.

#2245

Johann Forster

1496 - 1556 (60 years)

Johann Forster Forsterus, Förster or Forstheim was a Lutheran theologian, Protestant reformer and professor of Hebrew. He took part in the Protestation at Speyer. Johann-Forster studied Hebrew at the University of Ingolstadt under Johannes Reuchlin and continued his studies at the University of Leipzig and the University of Wittenberg. Being 24 years old, he was appointed professor for Hebrew at Zwickau in Saxony in 1525. He married his wife Margarethe née Fischer in Leipzig in the same year. After Zwickau, his next waystations then included Wittenberg , Augsburg , Tübingen , Regensburg , Nur...

#2246

Georg Witzel

1501 - 1573 (72 years)

Georg Witzel was a German theologian. Life He received his primary and academic education in the schools of Schmalkalden, Eisenach, and Halle, and then spent two years at the University of Erfurt, and seven months at the University of Wittenberg. In keeping with his father's wishes, Witzel was ordained a priest in 1520, and was appointed Vicar of Vacha. In 1524, however, the teachings of Martin Luther attracted him.

#2247

Valerius Herberger

1562 - 1627 (65 years)

Valerius Herberger was a German Lutheran preacher and theologian. Life He was born at Fraustadt, Silesia . He studied for three years at Freystadt in Silesia , and then entered the University of Frankfort-on-the-Oder. In 1582 he went to Leipzig University.

#2248

Joannes Molanus

Joannes Molanus

1533 - 1585 (52 years)

Joannes Molanus , often cited simply as Molanus, is the Latinized name of Jan Vermeulen or Van der Meulen, an influential Counter Reformation Catholic theologian of Louvain University, where he was Professor of Theology, and Rector from 1578. Born at Lille , he was a priest and canon of St. Peter's Church, Leuven, where he died.

#2249

Reinerius Saccho

1300 - 1263 (-37 years)

Reinerius Saccho was an Italian Dominican inquisitor. Biography Saccho was born at Piacenza about the beginning of the thirteenth century; died about 1263. It is generally said that he died in 1258 or 1259, but this is contradicted by the Brief of Urban IV which calls him to Rome on 21 July 1262.

#2250

Lorenzo Campeggio

Lorenzo Campeggio

1474 - 1539 (65 years)

Lorenzo Campeggio was an Italian cardinal and politician. He was the last cardinal protector of England. Life Campeggio was born in Milan, the eldest of five sons. In 1500, he took his doctorate in canon and civil law at Bologna and married Francesca Guastavillani with whom he had five children. When she died in 1509, Campeggio began an ecclesiastical career under Pope Julius II's patronage.

« Previous Next »

Image Attributions