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.
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List of the most influential people in Theology,
#2751
Konrad Wimpina
1460 - 1531 (71 years)
Konrad Wimpina was a German Roman Catholic theologian and humanist of the early Reformation period. He was a quiet and stubborn conservative, considered quiet but somewhat narrow. In theology he was a pupil of Martin Polich of Mellerstadt and a Thomist.
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Hans Gerhard Stub
1849 - 1931 (82 years)
Hans Gerhard Stub was an American Lutheran theologian and church leader. He served as Bishop of the Norwegian Lutheran Church in America. Background Hans Gerhard Stub was born in Muskego, Wisconsin. His parents were Lutheran Pastor Hans Andreas Stub and Ingeborg Margrethe Arentz , both immigrants from Norway. Hans Stub was born in an immigrant cabin in Wisconsin. He was shaped from childhood by the life within the Norwegian Synod, which his father had help found in 1853. He studied for a time in Norway at the Bergen Cathedral School.
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Rowland Williams
1817 - 1870 (53 years)
Rowland Williams was a Welsh theologian and educationalist. He was vice-principal and Professor of Hebrew at St David's College, Lampeter, from 1849 to 1862 and one of the most influential theologians of the nineteenth century. He supported biblical criticism and pioneered comparative religious studies in Britain. He was also a priest in the Church of England, and the vicar of Broad Chalke in Wiltshire, where he is buried. Williams is also credited with introducing rugby football to Wales; Lampeter's team was the first to be established in the nation.
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Carl Clemen
1865 - 1940 (75 years)
Carl Christian Clemen , best known as Carl Clemen, was a German theologian and religious historian. He was a member of the history of religions school. Career Clemen was Professor of New Testament and religious history at the University of Bonn. He was a critic of the Christ myth theory and refuted the arguments of Arthur Drews, Peter Jensen and other mythicists. He was also critical of the ideas of Anthroposophy and Theosophy.
Go to Profile#2755
Alan Richardson
1905 - 1975 (70 years)
Alan Richardson, was a British Anglican priest and academic. From 1964 to 1975, he served as Dean of York. Early life and education Richardson was educated at Liverpool University, Exeter College, Oxford and Ridley Hall, Cambridge.
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Anton Fridrichsen
1888 - 1953 (65 years)
Anton Johnson Fridrichsen was a Norwegian-born Swedish theologian. Biography He was born at Meråker in Trøndelag, Norway. He became cand. theol. in 1911 and then studied ancient Christian theology and classical philology at the University of Breslau and the University of Göttingen. In 1925 he received his theological doctorate from the University of Strasbourg. He was appointed professor of exegesis at the Uppsala University from 1928. Among his works are Hagios-Qadoš from 1916, and his thesis from 1925 Le Problème du miracle dans le christianisme primitif .
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Henry Augustus Boardman
1808 - 1880 (72 years)
Henry Augustus Boardman was an American minister and author. Boardman was born in Troy, N Y, January 9, 1808. His parents were John Boardman and Clarinda Starbuck, and he often said that he was the product of a Puritan father and a Quaker mother. He graduated from Yale College in 1829. In the fall of 1830 he entered the Theological Seminary in Princeton, N. J., and in April 1833, was licensed to preach. In September 1833, he was called to the pastorate of the Tenth Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia, over which he was duly installed, November 8, 1833, and of which he continued in charge until May 1876, when he became Pastor Emeritus.
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Leopold Ackermann
1771 - 1831 (60 years)
Leopold Ackermann , known by his cloistral name as Petrus Fourerius, was a professor of exegesis. He entered on 10 October 1790 in the choral order of Klosterneuburg and studied from 1791-1795 in Vienna. In the following, he became priest and professor for oriental languages at the Stiftshof in Vienna, in 1800 also librarian. He earned his doctorate in theology in 1802, and in 1806 a professorship in exegesis, continuing for 25 years.
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Karl Bornhäuser
1868 - 1947 (79 years)
Karl Bornhäuser was a German New Testament theologian. He studied theology at the universities of Halle and Greifswald, where he was a student of Hermann Cremer. He worked as a clergyman in Sinsheim and Karlsruhe , and as a regional pastor in Rastatt . In 1902 he became an associate professor of systematic and practical theology at the University of Greifswald, and from 1907 to 1933, he taught classes as a full professor at the University of Marburg. From 1912 onward, he was a member of the consistory in Kassel.
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John Brande Morris
1812 - 1880 (68 years)
John Brande Morris, known to friends as Jack Morris was an English Anglican theologian, later a Roman Catholic priest. He was a noted academic eccentric, but an important scholar of Syriac. Life He studied at Balliol College, Oxford, graduating in 1834 and 1837 . He was then elected Petrean Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford, lecturing on Hebrew and Syriac.
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V. A. Demant
1893 - 1983 (90 years)
Vigo Auguste Demant , known as V. A. Demant, was an English Anglican priest, theologian, and social commentator. He was one of the 14 committee members who served on the Wolfenden Report on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution.
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Johann Georg Conrad Oberdieck
1794 - 1880 (86 years)
Johann Georg Conrad Oberdieck was a German clergyman and pomologist. From 1812 to 1815 he studied theology at the University of Göttingen, and following graduation, served as a subconrector at Michaelisschule in Lüneburg. Several years later he became a pastor in Bardowick, and afterwards worked as an ecclesiastical superintendent in Sulingen and Nienburg/Weser . In 1853 he relocated to the community of Jeinsen as a superintendent.
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John Mason Neale
1818 - 1866 (48 years)
John Mason Neale was an English Anglican priest, scholar, and hymnwriter. He worked and wrote on a wide range of holy Christian texts, including obscure medieval hymns, both Western and Eastern. Among his most famous hymns is the 1853 Good King Wenceslas, set on Boxing Day. An Anglo-Catholic, Neale's works have found positive reception in high-church Anglicanism and Western Rite Orthodoxy.
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John Dick
1764 - 1833 (69 years)
John Dick was a Scottish minister and theological writer. Life He was born on 10 October 1764 at Aberdeen, where his father was minister of the associate congregation of seceders. His mother was Helen Tolmie, daughter of Captain Tolmie of Aberdeen. Educated at the grammar school and King's College, Aberdeen, he studied for the ministry of the Secession church, under John Brown of Haddington.
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Valentin Alberti
1635 - 1697 (62 years)
Valentin Alberti was a Lutheran, orthodox philosopher and theologian from Silesia and was the son of a preacher. He is known for defending Lutheran orthodoxy against the natural law views of Hugo Grotius, Samuel von Pufendorf and Christian Thomasius, and being an active polemicist against Roman Catholicism.
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Juan Luis Maneiro
1744 - 1802 (58 years)
Juan Luis Maneiro was a Mexican Jesuit teacher, scholar, biographer, theologian, and poet. After the expulsion of the Jesuits from Spanish provinces , he went to Italy, where he wrote Latin biographies of illustrious Mexican Jesuits.
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Willem Kremer
1896 - 1985 (89 years)
Willem Kremer was a Dutch pastor of the Christian Reformed Churches and a professor of practical theology at the Theological University of Apeldoorn. Life and work Willem Kremer was born in Zwolle. His father, Gerrit Kremer, worked as a gardener and inspired him to pursue gardening. After the completion of his studies, he worked in greenhouses in Wassenaar, where he contracted the Spanish flu. During his illness, he discovered a passion for religion. In 1926, he completed his studies of theology in Apeldoorn and became a Christian Reformed minister in Kornhorn. In Kornhorn he was confirmed by his mentor professor Jacob Jan van der Schuit.
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Johann Matthäus Meyfart
1590 - 1642 (52 years)
Johann Matthäus Meyfart, also Johann Matthaeus Meyfahrt, Mayfart was a German Lutheran theologist, educator, academic teacher, hymn writer and minister. He was an opponent fighter of witch trials. Career Meyfart was born in Jena, the son of a minister, and studied at the University of Jena from 1608, first the liberal arts graduating in 1603, then theology, continued at the University of Wittenberg from 1614. He taught from 1617 at the Gymnasium in Coburg, serving as its Rektor from 1623.
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Edward Cardwell
1787 - 1861 (74 years)
Edward Cardwell was an English theologian also noted for his contributions to the study of English church history. In addition to his scholarly work, he filled various administrative positions in the University of Oxford.
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Francis Lambert
1486 - 1530 (44 years)
Francis Lambert was a Protestant reformer, the son of a papal official at Avignon, where he was born between 1485 and 1487. At the age of 15 he entered the Franciscan monastery at Avignon, and after 1517 he was an itinerant preacher, travelling through France, Italy and Switzerland. Lambert's study of the Scriptures shook his faith in Roman Catholic theology, and by 1522 he had abandoned his order, and became known to the leaders of the Reformation in Switzerland and Germany. He did not, however, identify himself either with Zwinglianism or Lutheranism; he debated with Huldrych Zwingli at Zür...
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Jacobus Latomus
1475 - 1544 (69 years)
Jacobus Latomus was a Catholic Flemish theologian, a distinguished member of the Faculty of Theology at the University of Leuven. Latomus was a theological adviser to the Inquisition, and his exchange with William Tyndale is particularly noted. The general focus of his academic work centered on opposing Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation, supporting the papacy and the hierarchy of the Catholic Church. Etymology: Latinized Latomus = Masson from Greek lā-tómos 'stone-cutter, quarryman', thus 'mason'.
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Hans von Campenhausen
1903 - 1989 (86 years)
Hans Erich Freiherr von Campenhausen was a German Baltic Protestant theologian. He is one of the most important Protestant ecclesiastical historians of the 20th century. Life and work Hans von Campenhausen came from the landowning nobility. Born in Rosenbeck, Livonia, Campenhausen's family escaped to Germany during the Russian Revolution. He graduated from high school in Heidelberg in 1922, and went on to study theology and history at the universities of Heidelberg and Marburg where he was particularly influenced by the theologians Rudolf Bultmann, Hans Freiherr von Soden and Martin Dibelius....
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Niels Hemmingsen
1513 - 1600 (87 years)
Niels Hemmingsen was a Danish Lutheran theologian. He was pastor of the Church of the Holy Ghost, Copenhagen and professor at the University of Copenhagen. The street Niels Hemmingsens Gade in Copenhagen is named in his honor.
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Feliks Suk
1845 - 1915 (70 years)
Feliks Suk was Croatian university professor and rector of the University of Zagreb. It was Zagreb archbishop and cardinal Juraj Haulik who enabled young Suk a study of theology in Innsbruck. He was ordained for a priest in 1868. He received his Ph.D. in 1870. He conducted various jobs in the Zagreb Archdiocese, before he became a professor of moral theology at the newly established Royal University of Franz Joseph I. He served as a dean of the Faculty of Theology in two mandates. In the academic year 1882/1883 he served as a rector of the University of Zagreb, and the following academic year...
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Hugh Broughton
1549 - 1612 (63 years)
Hugh Broughton was an English scholar and theologian. Early life He was born at Owlbury, Bishop's Castle, Shropshire. He called himself a Cambrian, implying Welsh blood in his veins. He was educated by Bernard Gilpin at Houghton-le-Spring and at Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he matriculated in 1570. The foundation of his Hebrew learning was laid, in his first year at Cambridge, by his attendance on the lectures of the French scholar Antoine Rodolphe Chevallier.
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Otto Flügel
1842 - 1914 (72 years)
Otto Flügel was a German philosopher and theologian. Biography He studied at Schulpforta and Halle, and took up pastoral work. He was made editor of the Zeitschrift für exacte Philosophie im Sinne des Neueren Philosophischen Realismus , and in 1894 was one of the founders of Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Pädagogik. He was a supporter of Herbartian realism, as opposed to New-Kantian speculations, yet he believed in the necessity of a revelation.
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Gustavus Waffelaert
1847 - 1931 (84 years)
Gustave Joseph Waffelaert was the 22nd bishop of Bruges in Belgium. Life Waffelaert was born in Rollegem on 27 August 1847. After attending St Vincent's college, Ypres, and the Minor Seminary, Roeselare he entered the Major Seminary, Bruges. He was ordained to the priesthood in Bruges on 17 December 1870, and from 1871 to 1875 served as an assistant priest in the parish of Blankenberge.
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Johann Bollig
1821 - 1895 (74 years)
Johann Bollig was a German advisor of Pope Pius IX in the lead up to the First Vatican Council. Bollig was born near Düren, Rhenish Prussia, and died in Rome, Italy. Prior to his time as a Pontifical Theologian he served as a theology professor in Syria.
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Girolamo Seripando
1493 - 1563 (70 years)
Girolamo Seripando was an Augustinian friar, Italian theologian and cardinal. Life He was of noble birth, and intended by his parents for the legal profession. After their death, however, at the age of fourteen, he entered the Augustinian Order, at Viterbo, where he studied Greek and Hebrew as well as philosophy and theology.
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Friedrich Samuel Gottfried Sack
1738 - 1817 (79 years)
Friedrich Samuel Gottfried Sack was Prussian theologian, court preacher, and Church governor. Life Friedrich Samuel Gottfried Sack was born in Magdeburg in the Prussian Duchy of Magdeburg on 4 September 1738, the eldest son of August Friedrich Wilhelm Sack by his second wife. His mother was descended of a French refugee family, which explains a fondness which Sack had for the French language and literature.
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Povilas Jakubėnas
1871 - 1953 (82 years)
Povilas Jakubėnas was a Lithuanian Calvinist clergyman, general superintendent of the Lithuanian branch of the Reformed Church during the interbellum, professor of theology, Lithuanian book smuggler during his student times.
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Elmore Harris
1855 - 1911 (56 years)
Elmore Harris was a Canadian Baptist pastor. He was the founder of the Walmer Road Baptist Church and one of the founders of Toronto Bible Training School in 1894 which soon changed its name to Toronto Bible College .
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Luis Galiana y Cervera
1740 - 1771 (31 years)
Luis Galiana y Cervera was a Spanish Dominican theologian, philologist and writer. Early life Luis Galiana y Cervera was born on 8 June 1740 in Ontinyent, Spain, the son of a prominent physician. At the age of 16 he joined the Dominican Order and became part of the Convent of Saint John and of Saint Vincent of Ontinyent. His superiors sent him to study philosophy and theology at a school in Orihuela, where he was noted both for his intellect and for his moral virtues.
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Sylvester Mazzolini
1456 - 1523 (67 years)
Sylvester Mazzolini, in Italian Silvestro Mazzolini da Prierio, in Latin Sylvester Prierias , was a theologian born at Priero, Piedmont; he died at Rome. Prierias perished when the imperial troops forced their way into the city, leading to the Sack of Rome.
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Francis Atterbury
1663 - 1732 (69 years)
Francis Atterbury was an English man of letters, politician and bishop. A High Church Tory and Jacobite, he gained patronage under Queen Anne, but was mistrusted by the Hanoverian Whig ministries, and banished for communicating with the Old Pretender in the Atterbury Plot. He was a noted wit and a gifted preacher.
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William of Auvergne
1180 - 1249 (69 years)
William of Auvergne was a French theologian and philosopher who served as Bishop of Paris from 1228 until his death. He was one of the first western European philosophers to engage with and comment extensively upon Aristotelian and Islamic philosophy.
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Johan Lunde
1866 - 1938 (72 years)
Johan Peter Lunde was a Norwegian theologian and Bishop of the Diocese of Oslo. Biography Lunde was born at Lillehammer, Norway. He was the son of Knud Truls Wiel Lunde and Mariane Sophie Brun . Lunde graduated artium in 1883. He studied theology at the University of Kristiania and became cand.theol. in 1890. He first worked as a teacher before he was ordained at Kristiansand in 1897. In 1900, Lunde became a parish priest in Bygland. In 1906, Lunde became the resident chapel and in 1910 parish priest at St. Johannes Church in Stavanger. In 1920 he moved to Kristiania and became a parish priest at Gamlebyen.
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Gustav Adolf Wislicenus
1803 - 1875 (72 years)
Gustav Adolf Wislicenus was a German theologian, one of the leaders of the Free Congregations. Biography He studied theology at Halle, and as member of the Burschenschaft was sentenced in 1824 to twelve years' confinement in a fortress. He was pardoned in 1829 and continued his studies in Berlin. In 1841 he became pastor at Halle, and became associated with the Friends of Light, and in consequence of a lecture delivered at Köthen in 1844, was deprived of his pastorate in 1846. He then a became a preacher of the free congregation at Halle.
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Cuthbert
635 - 687 (52 years)
Cuthbert of Lindisfarne was an Anglo-Saxon saint of the early Northumbrian church in the Celtic tradition. He was a monk, bishop and hermit, associated with the monasteries of Melrose and Lindisfarne in the Kingdom of Northumbria, today in north-eastern England and south-eastern Scotland. Both during his life and after his death, he became a popular medieval saint of Northern England, with a cult centred on his tomb at Durham Cathedral. Cuthbert is regarded as the patron saint of Northumbria. His feast days are 20 March and 4 September .
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Nicholas of Clémanges
1363 - 1437 (74 years)
Mathieu-Nicolas Poillevillain de Clémanges was a French humanist and theologian. He studied in the Collège de Navarre, University of Paris, and in 1380 received the degree of Licentiate, and then later received a Master of Arts. He studied theology under Jean Gerson and Pierre d'Ailly, and received the degree of Bachelor of Theology in 1393.
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Humphry Ditton
1675 - 1715 (40 years)
Humphry Ditton was an English mathematician. He was the author of several influential works. Life Ditton was born on 29 May 1675 in Salisbury, the only son of Humphry Ditton, gentleman and ardent nonconformist, and Miss Luttrell of Dunster Castle, near Taunton. He studied theology privately, and was for some time also a dissenting minister, at Tonbridge, where he married a Miss Ball.
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Heinz Brunotte
1896 - 1984 (88 years)
Arnold August Heinz Brunotte was a German Lutheran theologian. From 1949 to 1965 Brunotte was President of the Church Chancellery of the Evangelical Church in Germany . Career Heinz Brunotte attended the Leibniz Reform Gymnasium in Hanover. From 1919 to 1922 Brunotte studied Protestant Theology at the Universities of Marburg, Tübingen and Göttingen. This was followed by two years of study at the Loccum preacher seminar. This was followed by work as a pastor in Loccum. In autumn 1926 he was one of the founders of the Deins conference. From it emerged in 1929 the Hanoverian Young Evangelical Co...
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Guglielmo Audisio
1802 - 1882 (80 years)
Guglielmo Audisio was an Italian Catholic priest and writer. Life Guglielmo Audisio was born January 27, 1802, and graduated with degrees in philosophy and theology from the University of Turin. After teaching for four years in the seminary of Bra, in 1837 he was appointed by King Carlo Alberto, Dean of the Ecclesiastical Academy of Superga, where he taught sacred eloquence, moral theology, canon law and institutions of Roman law. He was expelled from this office because he was opposed to the Piedmontese Government. Audisio was a fervent upholder of papal and Catholic rights against the polit...
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Thomas Erskine
1788 - 1870 (82 years)
Thomas Erskine of Linlathen was a Scottish advocate and lay theologian in the early part of the 19th century. With his friend the Reverend John McLeod Campbell he attempted a revision of Calvinism.
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Luigi Imperatori
1844 - 1900 (56 years)
Luigi Imperatori , one of the most famous pedagogists and theologians of Canton Ticino, born in Pollegio , teacher and doctor of theology, an important contributor to the Swiss catholic newspapers: "Catholic Believer" and "Freedom." First Director of the magistral school of Canton Ticino, from 1888 to 1900.
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John Bunyan Reeve
1831 - 1916 (85 years)
John Bunyan Reeve was a Presbyterian minister and professor at Howard University. In 1871 he organized the department of theology at Howard. Early life John Bunyan Reeve was born October 29, 1831, in Mattituck, New York. He attended district schools and worked on a farm as a young man. His parents were Presbyterians and his mother pushed him to become a minister. As a young man he was a member of the Shiloh Presbyterian church under Rev. James W.C. Pennington. He worked as a teacher for a few months at New Tower, Long Island when, in 1853, he enrolled at the New York Central College at McGrawsville, New York, in a preparatory course for the seminary.
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Johann Deutschmann
1625 - 1706 (81 years)
Johann Deutschmann was a German Lutheran theologian. Life Deutschmann was born in Jüterbog the son of Jeremiah Deutschmann , a court assistant, and his wife, Anna Langen. He was educated in the local school. In 1639 he moved to Halle and completed his education there.
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Georg Samuel Dörffel
1643 - 1688 (45 years)
Georg Samuel Dörffel was a German theologian and amateur astronomer. Both the lunar crater Doerfel and the minor planet 4076 Dörffel are named in his honour. Biography Georg Samuel Dörffel was born in Plauen in 1643. His father Friedrich Dörffel was a clergyman who worked as the private tutor of the prince-elector of Brandenburg. Georg studied in Plauen, Leipzig and Jena. He obtained a master's degree in philosophy in 1663, and a bachelor in theology in 1667.
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Morris Joseph
1848 - 1930 (82 years)
Morris David Joseph studied at Jews' College, London, and in 1868 was appointed rabbi of the North London Synagogue; in 1874 he went to the Old Hebrew Congregation of Liverpool, where he officiated as preacher until 1882. He became delegate senior minister of the West London Synagogue in 1893, when David Woolf Marks retired from active service. Joseph published a collection of sermons, The Ideal in Judaism, London, 1893, and a valuable popular work on Jewish theology, Judaism as Creed and Life, in 1903. His position on Jewish religious belief and practice was conservative, midway between Refo...
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Johann Nepomuk Locherer
1773 - 1837 (64 years)
Johann Nepomuk Locherer was a German Catholic theologian born in Freiburg im Breisgau. From 1790 he studied theology in Freiburg, and furthered his education at the seminary in Meersburg. In 1798 he received his ordination in Breisach, and subsequently served in parishes in Rottenburg am Neckar and Endingen . At Endingen he strove for educational reforms. In 1830 he became a professor to the Catholic theological faculty at the University of Giessen.
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