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,
#3301
Michael Baumgarten
1812 - 1889 (77 years)
Michael Baumgarten was a German Protestant theologian. Baumgarten was born at Haseldorf in Schleswig-Holstein. Life He studied at Kiel University , and became professor ordinarius of theology at Rostock . A liberal scholar, he became widely known in 1854 through a work, Die Nachtgesichte Sacharjas. Eine Prophetenstimme aus der Gegenwart, in which, starting from texts in the Old Testament and assuming the tone of a prophet, he discussed topics of every kind.
Go to Profile#3302
Johann Friedrich Flatt
1759 - 1821 (62 years)
Johann Friedrich Flatt was a German Protestant theologian and philosopher. Life Johann Friedrich Flatt was born in Tübingen. His brother, Karl Christian Flatt , was also a theologian. He studied philosophy and theology in Tübingen, afterwards continuing his education in Göttingen. In 1785 he became a professor of philosophy at the University of Tübingen, where in 1792 he was appointed an associate professor of theology. In 1798 he succeeded Gottlob Christian Storr as a full professor of theology at Tübingen.
Go to Profile#3303
Oscar Joliet
1878 - 1969 (91 years)
Oscar Joliet was a scholar-priest who served between 1948 and 1969 as the Auxiliary bishop of Ghent. Life Oscar Jozef Joliet was born in Ghent, third recorded son of the baker, Augustus Joliet and his wife Lucia Joliet-Ysebaert from Zelzate. He attended school at the Sint-Barbaracollege, a Jesuit establishment in the city. Between 1896 and 1905 he attended the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. It was here that he received his doctorate of philosophy on 1 June 1901, and was ordained into the priesthood on 20 September 1902. Still at the Gregorian University, on 30 June 1905 he re...
Go to Profile#3304
James of Lausanne
James of Lausanne was the superior of the Dominican order in France from 1318 until his death in 1321. Nothing is known of James's life before his entrance into the Dominican priory at Lausanne in Switzerland and his assignment to theological studies in Paris in 1303. James earned his master's degree in theology in 1317 and was elected superior of the Dominican Province of France in 1318, a position he held until his death in 1321. In the course of his short academic career, James authored commentaries on multiple books of the Old and New Testaments and produced some 1,500 sermons. His oeuvr...
Go to Profile#3305
John Wood Oman
1860 - 1939 (79 years)
John Wood Oman, FBA was a Scottish theologian and Presbyterian minister. Biography The son of farmer, Oman was born on 23 July 1860 and grew up on Orkney. He studied philosophy at the University of Edinburgh , and then studied at the United Presbyterian Church's theological college in Edinburgh. In 1904 Oman gained a PhD from the University of Edinburgh. He was minister of Clayport Street Church in Alnwick . From 1907 to 1922, he was Professor of Systematic Theology and Apologetics at Westminster College, Cambridge. He then served as the college's principal from 1922 until his retirement in 1...
Go to Profile#3306
John Simson
1668 - 1740 (72 years)
John Simson was a Scottish "New Licht" theologian, involved in a long investigation of alleged heresy. He was suspended from teaching as Professor of Divinity at the University of Glasgow for his later life.
Go to Profile#3307
Heinrich Heshusius
1556 - 1597 (41 years)
Heinrich Heshusius was a prominent third-generation German Lutheran pastor, superintendent, and polemicist. He was the second son of Tilemann Heshusius and Hanna von Bert, two well-educated and influential German Lutherans from Wesel on the lower Rhine.
Go to Profile#3308
Peter Arkoudios
1562 - 1633 (71 years)
Peter Arkoudios was a Greek scholar of the 17th century and a Roman Catholic priest. Biography Born in Corfu in 1562/1563, Arkoudios studied at the Greek Pontifical College of Saint Athanasius in Rome and graduated with a doctorate of philosophy and theology in January 1591. He converted to Roman Catholicism from Greek Orthodoxy and was ordained a priest, showing great dedication to his new religion. Because of his knowledge and zeal he became loyal and very capable diplomat in many fine religious missions. Pope Gregory XIV and Pope Clement VII commissioned him to regulate the interests of th...
Go to Profile#3309
Friedemann Bechmann
1628 - 1703 (75 years)
Friedemann Bechmann was a German Lutheran theologian. Life Friedemann Bechmann was born in Elleben, a small town in the principality of Schwarzburg-Sondershausen, a short distance to the north of Erfurt. His father, Andreas Bechmann, was a church pastor originally from Remda, nearby. However, his father died in 1633 and after his mother, born Anna Maria Glass, also died, in 1637, he was taken in by his mother's brother, the physician Balthasar Glass, and grew up in Arnstadt. Later he was taken on by another of his mother's relatives, Salomo Glass, and educated at the gymnasium in Gotha...
Go to Profile#3310
Johann Jacob Rambach
1693 - 1735 (42 years)
Johann Jacob Rambach, also Johann Jakob Rambach was a Lutheran theologian and hymn writer. Life Rambach was the son of Hans Jakob Rambach, a cabinet maker. For a time, he trained with his father, but then attended the University of Halle as a student of medicine, before becoming interested in theology. In 1723 he was appointed as an adjunct of the theological faculty, and in 1727, after August Hermann Francke's death, a professor. After earning a Doctor of Divinity in 1731, he was appointed the first professor of theology at University of Giessen. He was offered a professorship at the University of Göttingen, but decided to remain in Giessen.
Go to Profile#3311
Josse Ravesteyn
1506 - 1570 (64 years)
Josse Ravesteyn, also spelled Ravestein , was a Flemish Roman Catholic theologian. Biography Born about 1506, at Tielt, a small town in Flanders, hence often called Tiletanus also known as Jean Leonardi Hasselius
Go to Profile#3312
John Erskine
1721 - 1803 (82 years)
John Erskine , the Scottish theologian, was born near Dunfermline at Carnock on 2 June 1721. His father was the great Scottish jurist John Erskine of Carnock and his grandfather was Colonel John Erskine of Cardross who had been in William of Orange's army when it invaded England in the Glorious Revolution of 1688.
Go to Profile#3313
Al-Sharif al-Jurjani
1340 - 1413 (73 years)
Ali ibn Mohammed al-Jurjani was a Persian encyclopedic writer, scientist, and traditionalist theologian. He is referred to as "al-Sayyid al-Sharif" in sources due to his alleged descent from Ali ibn Abi Taleb. He was born in the village of Ṭāḡu near Astarabad in Gorgan , and became a professor in Shiraz. When this city was plundered by Timur in 1387, he moved to Samarkand, but returned to Shiraz in 1405, and remained there until his death.
Go to Profile#3314
Simon Sulzer
1508 - 1585 (77 years)
Simon Sulzer was a Reformed theologian, Reformer, and Antistes of the Basel church. Life Sulzer was born in Schattenhalb, the child of a priest. He was educated in Bern and Lucerne. The sudden death of his father, the provost of Interlaken, forced him to turn to manual labor to support himself. He worked as a barber in Strasbourg and attended lectures by Martin Bucer and Wolfgang Capito. He moved to Basel in 1531, where he associated with Simon Grynaeus. Here he worked as a proofreader at the print shop of Johann Heerwagen and was also employed as a teacher. From 1533 he worked in Bern in edu...
Go to Profile#3315
Silvio Antoniano
1540 - 1603 (63 years)
Silvio Antoniani was a musician, canon lawyer, writer on education, priest and cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church, who spent most of his career in the Roman Curia. Life The son of a poor wool merchant, his talent with the lyre at a young age drew the attention of many patrons and led indirectly to his career in the Church.
Go to Profile#3316
Richard Graves
1763 - 1829 (66 years)
Richard Graves was a Church of Ireland cleric, theological scholar and author of Graves on the Pentateuch. He was a Doctor of Divinity, one of the seven Senior Fellows of Trinity College, Dublin; a member of the Royal Irish Academy; Regius Professor of Greek ; and Dean of Ardagh. He was the younger brother of Thomas Ryder Graves, Dean of Ardfert and Connor.
Go to Profile#3317
John Anderson
1748 - 1830 (82 years)
John Anderson was an Associate Presbyterian theologian. He was born in the far north of England, by the River Tweed. He was brought up as a member of the Associate Presbyterian Church of Scotland and became a minister. He sailed to the United States in June 1783, studied for four years, and was ordained in Philadelphia 31 October 1788. He later became the founding professor of one of the first Presbyterian seminaries in the United States, which later became Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, founded in 1794.
Go to Profile#3318
Jacques Du Frische
1640 - 1693 (53 years)
Jacques Du Frische was a French Benedictine theologian.
Go to Profile#3319
William Hallock Johnson
1865 - 1963 (98 years)
William Hallock Johnson was an American educator who served as president of the historically black Lincoln University of Pennsylvania from 1926 to 1936. He had a liberalizing effect on the institution, presiding over the appointment of its first Black faculty member, and substantially reduced the university's debt.
Go to Profile#3320
Johann Heinrich Winckler
1703 - 1770 (67 years)
Johann Heinrich Winckler was a German physicist and philosopher. Biography Early life Winckler was born in Wingendorf, a village in Silesia. He was educated at Leipzig University. One of his teachers was Andreas Rüdiger, an opponent of Christian Wolff. Winckler read Wolff's works and defended him against Rudiger during his lessons.
Go to Profile#3321
John Perowne
1823 - 1904 (81 years)
John James Stewart Perowne was an English Anglican bishop. Born in Burdwan, Bengal, Perowne was a member of a notable clerical family, whose origins were Huguenot. Life He was educated at Norwich School, and at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, becoming a fellow in 1849 and where his brother Edward was later Master. After holding a chair in King's College London, he became, in 1862, the fourth vice-principal of St Davids College, Lampeter, a college with which he was already familiar, for he had been external examiner between 1851 and 1852. The ageing Principal of the college took a back se...
Go to Profile#3322
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.
Go to Profile#3323
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.
Go to Profile#3324
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.
Go to Profile#3325
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.
Go to Profile#3326
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.
Go to Profile#3327
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.
Go to Profile#3328
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.
Go to Profile#3329
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.
Go to Profile#3330
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.
Go to Profile#3331
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.
Go to Profile#3332
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.
Go to Profile#3333
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.
Go to Profile#3334
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.
Go to Profile#3335
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.
Go to Profile#3336
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.
Go to Profile#3337
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.
Go to Profile#3338
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 ...
Go to Profile#3339
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 .
Go to Profile#3340
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.
Go to Profile#3341
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...
Go to Profile#3342
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.
Go to Profile#3343
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.
Go to Profile#3344
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.
Go to Profile#3345
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.
Go to Profile#3346
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".
Go to Profile#3347
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.
Go to Profile#3348
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.
Go to Profile#3349
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 .
Go to Profile#3350
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.
Go to Profile