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,
#3701
Bartolomé de Medina
1527 - 1580 (53 years)
Bartolomé de Medina, O.P. was a Spanish theologian born in Medina de Rioseco, Spain. A member of the Dominican Order and a student of Francisco de Vitoria, he was professor of theology at the University of Salamanca and a member of the School of Salamanca. He is best known as the originator of the doctrine of probabilism in moral theology, which holds that one may follow a course of action that has some probability, even if the opposite is more probable.
Go to Profile#3702
Noah Porter
1811 - 1892 (81 years)
Noah Thomas Porter III was an American Congregational minister, academic, philosopher, author, lexicographer and an outspoken anti-slavery activist. Porter Mountain, of the Adirondack Mountains, was named for him after he was the first to climb it in 1875. He was President of Yale College .
Go to Profile#3703
Henry Scott Holland
1847 - 1918 (71 years)
Henry Scott Holland was Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Oxford. He was also a canon of Christ Church, Oxford. The Scott Holland Memorial Lectures are held in his memory. Family and education Holland was born on 27 January 1847 at Ledbury, Herefordshire, the son of George Henry Holland of Dumbleton Hall, Evesham, and Charlotte Dorothy Gifford, the daughter of Lord Gifford. He was educated at Eton where he was a pupil of the influential Master William Johnson Cory, and at Balliol College, Oxford, where he took a first-class degree in greats. During his Oxford time he was greatly influenced by T. H.
Go to Profile#3704
Justus Jonas
1493 - 1555 (62 years)
Justus Jonas, the Elder , or simply Justus Jonas, was a German Lutheran theologian and reformer. He was a Jurist, Professor and Hymn writer. He is best known for his translations of the writings of Martin Luther and Philipp Melanchthon. He accompanied Martin Luther in his final moments.
Go to Profile#3705
Peter Damian
1007 - 1072 (65 years)
Peter Damian, OSB was an Italian reforming Benedictine monk and cardinal in the circle of Pope Leo IX. Dante placed him in one of the highest circles of Paradiso as a great predecessor of Francis of Assisi and he was declared a Doctor of the Church on 27 September 1828. His feast day is 21 February.
Go to Profile#3706
Gustav Adolf Deissmann
1866 - 1937 (71 years)
Gustav Adolf Deissmann was a German Protestant theologian, best known for his leading work on the Greek language used in the New Testament, which he showed was the koine, or commonly used tongue of the Hellenistic world of that time.
Go to Profile#3707
Ralph Cudworth
1617 - 1688 (71 years)
Ralph Cudworth was an English Anglican clergyman, Christian Hebraist, classicist, theologian and philosopher, and a leading figure among the Cambridge Platonists who became 11th Regius Professor of Hebrew , 26th Master of Clare Hall , and 14th Master of Christ's College . A leading opponent of Hobbes's political and philosophical views, his magnum opus was his The True Intellectual System of the Universe .
Go to Profile#3708
Otto Brunfels
1488 - 1534 (46 years)
Otto Brunfels was a German theologian and botanist. Carl von Linné listed him among the "Fathers of Botany". Life After studying theology and philosophy at the University of Mainz, Brunfels entered a Carthusian monastery in Mainz and later resettled to another Carthusian monastery at Königshofen near Strasbourg. In Strasbourg he got in contact with a learned lawyer Nikolaus Gerbel . Gerbel drew Brunfels' attention to the healing powers of plants and thus gave the impetus to the further botanical investigations.
Go to Profile#3709
Táhirih
1817 - 1852 (35 years)
Táhirih As a young girl she was educated privately by her father and showed herself a talented writer. Whilst in her teens she married the son of her uncle, with whom she had a difficult marriage. In the early 1840s she became a follower of Shaykh Ahmad and began a secret correspondence with his successor Kazim Rashti. Táhirih travelled to the Shiʻi holy city of Karbala to meet Kazim Rashti, but he died a number of days before her arrival. In 1844 aged about 27, in search of the Qa'im through the Islamic teachings she figured his whereabouts. Independent to any individual she became acquainted with the teachings of the Báb and accepted his religious claims as Qa'im.
Go to Profile#3710
Karl Budde
1850 - 1935 (85 years)
Karl Ferdinand Reinhard Budde was a German theologian, born in Bensberg, and a well-known authority on the Old Testament. Biography He studied theology, philosophy and history at the universities of Bonn and Berlin, obtaining his habilitation for Old Testament studies at Bonn in 1873. He was inspector of the Evangelisches Theologisches Stift in Bonn from 1878 to 1885, and in the meantime, became an associate professor of Old Testament theology at the University of Bonn . In 1889 he attained a full professorship at Strassburg, and from 1900 to 1921 served as president of Old Testament theology and exegesis at the University of Marburg.
Go to Profile#3711
Domingo Báñez
1528 - 1604 (76 years)
Domingo Báñez was a Spanish Dominican and Scholastic theologian. The qualifying Mondragonensis sometimes attached to his name seems to refer to the birthplace of his father, Juan Báñez, at Mondragón in Guipúzcoa.
Go to Profile#3712
Magnús Eiríksson
1806 - 1881 (75 years)
Magnús Eiríksson was also the Old Norse name of Magnus IV of Sweden.Magnús Eiríksson was an Icelandic theologian and a contemporary critic of Søren Aabye Kierkegaard and Hans Lassen Martensen in Copenhagen.
Go to Profile#3713
Henry of Ghent
1217 - 1293 (76 years)
Henry of Ghent was a scholastic philosopher, known as Doctor Solemnis , and also as Henricus de Gandavo and Henricus Gandavensis. Life Henry was born in the district of Mude, near Ghent. He is supposed to have belonged to an Italian family named Bonicolli, in Dutch Goethals, but the question of his name has been much discussed . He studied at Ghent and then at Cologne under Albertus Magnus. After obtaining the degree of doctor he returned to Ghent, and is said to have been the first to lecture there publicly on philosophy and theology.
Go to Profile#3714
Al-Shawkani
1759 - 1839 (80 years)
Muḥammad ibn Ali ibn Muḥammad ibn Abd Allah, better known as al-Shawkānī , was a prominent Yemeni Sunni Islamic scholar, jurist, theologian and reformer. Shawkani was one of the most influential proponents of Athari theology and is revered as one of their canonical scholars by Salafi Muslims. His teachings played a major role in the emergence of the Salafi movement. Influenced by the teachings of the medieval Hanbali scholar Ibn Taymiyya, Al-Shawkani became noteworthy for his staunch stances against the practice of Taqlid , calls for direct interpretation of Scriptures, opposition to Kalam as...
Go to Profile#3715
John McCloskey
1810 - 1885 (75 years)
John McCloskey was an American senior-ranking prelate of the Catholic Church. He was the first American-born Archbishop of New York from 1864 until his death in 1885, having previously served as Bishop of Albany . In 1875, McCloskey became the first American cardinal. He served as the first president of St. John's College, now Fordham University, beginning in 1841.
Go to Profile#3716
Johann Karl Ludwig Gieseler
1792 - 1854 (62 years)
Johann Karl Ludwig Gieseler, KH was a Protestant German church historian. Biography He was born at Petershagen, near Minden, where his father, Georg Christof Friedrich, was preacher. In his tenth year he entered the orphanage at Halle, from which he duly passed to the university, his studies being interrupted in October 1813 by a period of military service, during which he was enrolled as a volunteer in a regiment of chasseurs. On the conclusion of peace he returned to Halle, and, having in 1817 taken his degree in philosophy, he became assistant head of the Minden gymnasium, and in 1818 w...
Go to Profile#3717
Johann Friedrich Abegg
1765 - 1840 (75 years)
Johann Friedrich Abegg was a German theologian. He was the brother of many siblings in a family of preachers, and was adopted in 1786 as candidate for the preacher office in the Electorate of the Palatinate. He visited the college in Heidelberg from 1789 to 1794 and also worked as extraordinary professor of philology since 1791. In 1794 he started to practise as priest, first in Boxberg, then in Leimen and Heidelberg in the parishes St. Peter and Heiliggeist.
Go to Profile#3718
Joachim Lütkemann
1608 - 1655 (47 years)
Joachim Lütkemann was a German Lutheran theologian and writer of devotional literature. Life Joachim Lütkemann was the son of Samuel Lütkemann, an apothecary from Demmin who had become mayor, and his wife Katharina, née Zander. After attending school in Demmin, he went to university in Greifswald in 1624, then in 1626 to the Marienstiftsgymnasium in Stettin. From 1629–1634he then studied philosophy and theology at the University of Strasbourg, where he was especially influenced by the teachings of Johann Conrad Dannhauer and Johann Schmidt, and later by those of Philipp Jakob Spener. After a ...
Go to Profile#3719
Joseph Wittig
1879 - 1949 (70 years)
Joseph Wittig was a German Catholic theologian and writer born in Neusorge, a village in the district of Neurode, Silesia. In 1903 he received his doctorate of theology from the University of Breslau, and was ordained a priest by Cardinal Georg von Kopp . Subsequently, he worked as a chaplain in Lauban, and from 1904 studied Christian art and architecture in Rome as a member of the German Archaeological Institute. In the meantime, he took part in a study trip to North Africa. being accompanied by theologian Franz Joseph Dölger . After returning to Germany, he served as a chaplain in Patschkau...
Go to Profile#3720
Leontius of Byzantium
480 - 543 (63 years)
Leontius of Byzantium was a Byzantine Christian monk and the author of an influential series of theological writings on sixth-century Christological controversies. Though the details of his life are scarce, he is considered by some a groundbreaking innovator in Christian theological reflection for having introduced Aristotelian definitions into theology.
Go to Profile#3721
Muhammed Hamdi Yazır
1878 - 1942 (64 years)
Muhammed Hamdi Yazır also known as Elmalılı Hamdi Yazır and Elmalılı was a Turkish Maturidi theologian, logician, Qur'an translator, Qur'anic exegesis scholar, Islamic legal academic, philosopher and encyclopedist.
Go to Profile#3722
Claus Harms
1778 - 1855 (77 years)
Claus Harms was a German clergyman and theologian. Life Harms was born at Fahrstedt in Schleswig, and in his youth worked in his father's mill. At the University of Kiel he repudiated the prevailing rationalism and under the influence of Schleiermacher became a fervent Evangelical preacher, first at Lunden , and then at Kiel .
Go to Profile#3723
József Mindszenty
1892 - 1975 (83 years)
József Mindszenty was a Hungarian cardinal of the Catholic Church who served as Archbishop of Esztergom and leader of the Catholic Church in Hungary from 1945 to 1973. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, for five decades "he personified uncompromising opposition to fascism and communism in Hungary". During World War II, he was imprisoned by the pro-Nazi Arrow Cross Party. After the war, he opposed communism and communist persecution in his country. As a result, he was tortured and given a life sentence in a 1949 show trial that generated worldwide condemnation, including a United Nation...
Go to Profile#3724
George Bell
1883 - 1958 (75 years)
George Kennedy Allen Bell was an Anglican theologian, Dean of Canterbury, Bishop of Chichester, member of the House of Lords and a pioneer of the ecumenical movement. Early career Bell was born in Hayling Island, Hampshire, as the eldest child of Sarah Georgina Megaw and her husband James Allen Bell . His sister Margorie married Cecil Wood, Bishop of Melanesia .
Go to Profile#3725
Johann Hülsemann
1602 - 1661 (59 years)
Johann Hülsemann was a German Lutheran theologian. He is known as one of the most prominent Lutheran scholastic opponents of Georgius Calixtus in the Syncretistic Controversy. Biography Early life and education Hülsemann was born at Esens, 65 m. n.w. of Bremen in East Frisia, 4 December 1602. He was educated at Norden, Stade, and Hanover. Before he had reached the age of eighteen, he went to the University of Rostock, and two years later to Wittenberg. He also studied briefly at Marburg.
Go to Profile#3726
Emil Bock
1895 - 1959 (64 years)
Emil Bock was a German anthroposophist, author, theologian and one of the founders of The Christian Community. In 1914 he began a study of languages at the University of Bonn. However, the same year he enlisted as a volunteer in the First World War and was sent to the front in Flanders, where he was wounded. In 1916, he met for the first time the theologian Friedrich Rittelmeyer, and from 1918 he studied Protestant theology in Berlin, and graduated in 1921. The same year was one of the founders of the Christian Community in Switzerland. Bock soon became the leader of the seminar of the Christ...
Go to Profile#3727
Johann Gottfried Scheibel
1783 - 1843 (60 years)
Johann Gottfried Scheibel was a German theologian and a leader of the Old Lutherans. Education and Ministry Johann Scheibel was born in Breslau, Silesia, and studied at the University of Halle from 1801 to 1804. He went on from there to be the assistant minister at St Elisabeth's Church in Breslau from 1804 to 1815, then advancing to deacon. Between 1811 and 1830 he was a professor of theology, first on an extraordinary, since 1818 on an ordinary chair, at the Silesian Frederick William's University in Breslau until he was suspended from his post.
Go to Profile#3728
Michael Sars
1805 - 1869 (64 years)
Michael Sars was a Norwegian theologian and biologist. Biography Sars was born in Bergen, Norway. He studied natural history and theology at Royal Frederick University from 1823 and completed a cand.theol. degree in 1828. For several years he taught at a number of different schools, firstly in Christiania and then in Bergen. In 1831 he was appointed vicar to Kinn Church on the Norwegian north-west coast; eight years later he transferred to Manger, just north of Bergen. Finally, in 1854 he was named professor of zoology at the University of Oslo where he remained for the rest of his life. He died in 1869.
Go to Profile#3729
Johann Baptist von Hirscher
1788 - 1865 (77 years)
Johann Baptist von Hirscher was a German Catholic theologian associated with the Catholic Tübingen school. He exerted a great influence in the areas of moral theology, homiletics, and catechetics. Life He was born in Alt-Ergarten, Bodnegg. His parents were pious peasants. He studied at Weissenau monastery school, the lyceum of Constance. The vicar general of the diocese, Ignaz Heinrich von Wessenberg became his patron. Hirscher attended the University of Freiburg and entered the seminary in Meersburg in 1809. He was ordained priest in 1810. For two years he was curate at ; in 1812 he became ...
Go to Profile#3730
Hans Ehrenberg
1883 - 1958 (75 years)
Hans Philipp Ehrenberg was a German Jewish philosopher and theologian. One of the co-founders of the Confessing Church, he was forced to emigrate to England because of his Jewish ancestry and his opposition to Nazism.
Go to Profile#3731
Albert Baldwin Dod
1805 - 1845 (40 years)
Albert Baldwin Dod was an American Presbyterian theologian and professor of mathematics. Early life Dod was born on March 24, 1805, in Mendham, New Jersey. He was the son of Daniel Dod and Nancy Dod . His mother was the sister of Dr. Ezra Squire, of Caldwell, New Jersey.
Go to Profile#3732
Wilfred Monod
1867 - 1943 (76 years)
William Frédéric Monod better known as Wilfred Monod was a Protestant Professor of theology associated to Paris and Rouen. He founded the Order of Watchers and was active in ecumenical efforts in France. He once suggested a desire for the rehabilitation of Marcion of Sinope and a removal of omnipotence and omnipresence from the conception of God. These ideas were quite controversial. He was also the father of Théodore Monod.
Go to Profile#3733
Samuel Simon Schmucker
1799 - 1873 (74 years)
Samuel Simon Schmucker was a German-American Lutheran pastor and theologian. He was integral to the founding of the Lutheran church body known as the General Synod, as well as the oldest continuously operating Lutheran seminary and college in North America .
Go to Profile#3734
Hans Denck
1495 - 1527 (32 years)
Hans Denck was a German theologian and Anabaptist leader during the Reformation. Biography Denck was born in 1495 in the Bavarian town of Habach. He entered the University of Ingolstadt on October 10, 1517, and graduated in 1519. Denck began working as a family tutor in Niederstotzingen. By the recommendation of Johannes Oecolampadius, Denck became headmaster at the St. Sebaldus school in Nuremberg in 1523. He became involved in the trial of the artist brothers Sebald and Barthel Beham, who were expelled from the city in 1524 at the instigation of Andreas Osiander. In Nuremberg, he met Thomas Müntzer, and so first came in contact with radical theology, which he accepted with modifications.
Go to Profile#3735
Bernhard Weiss
1827 - 1918 (91 years)
Bernhard Weiss was a German Protestant New Testament scholar. He was the father of Johannes Weiss and the painter, Hedwig Weiss. Biography Weiss was born at Königsberg. After studying theology at the University of Königsberg , Halle and Berlin, he became professor extraordinarius at Königsberg in 1852, and afterwards professor ordinarius at Kiel and Berlin. In 1880 he was made superior consistorial councillor of the Evangelical State Church of Prussia's older Provinces.
Go to Profile#3736
Hermann Cremer
1834 - 1903 (69 years)
August Hermann Cremer was a German Protestant theologian. He was considered head of the so-called Greifswalder Schule at the University of Greifswald. He studied theology in Halle under Friedrich August Tholuck and at Tübingen as a pupil of Johann Tobias Beck. From 1859 he served as pastor in Ostönnen , and in 1870 was appointed professor of systematic theology at the University of Greifswald.
Go to Profile#3737
Heinrich Scholz
1884 - 1956 (72 years)
Heinrich Scholz was a German logician, philosopher, and Protestant theologian. He was a peer of Alan Turing who mentioned Scholz when writing with regard to the reception of "On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem": "I have had two letters asking for reprints, one from Braithwaite at King's and one from a professor [sic] in Germany... They seemed very much interested in the paper. [...] I was disappointed by its reception here."
Go to Profile#3738
José Rafael Campoy
1723 - 1777 (54 years)
José Rafael Campoy Gastélum was a Mexican Jesuit, teacher, scholar, and theologian. After the expulsion of the Jesuits from Spanish provinces , he went to Italy, where he died ten years later. Biography José Rafael Campoy was born in Álamos, New Navarre, now known as Sonora. A son of Francisco Xavier Campoy and Andrea Gastélum, he was born into a wealthy and distinguished family.
Go to Profile#3739
Nathan Bangs
1778 - 1862 (84 years)
Nathan Bangs was an American Christian theologian in the Methodist tradition and influential leader in the Methodist Episcopal Church prior to the 1860s. Born in Stratford, Connecticut, he received a limited education, taught school, and in 1799 went to Upper Canada in search of work as either a teacher or a land-surveyor. He was converted to Methodism in 1800 and worked for eight years as an itinerant preacher in the wilderness of the Canadian provinces, serving communities in the areas of Kingston, York, London, Niagara, and Montreal. Of particular note is his responsibility for organizing the first camp meeting in Upper Canada in the fall of 1805.
Go to Profile#3740
Bar Hebraeus
1226 - 1286 (60 years)
Gregory Bar Hebraeus , known by his Syriac ancestral surname as Barebraya or Barebroyo, in Arabic sources by his kunya Abu'l-Faraj, and his Latinized name Abulpharagius in the Latin West, was a Maphrian of the Syriac Orthodox Church from 1264 to 1286. He was a prominent writer, who created various works in the fields of Christian theology, philosophy, history, linguistics, and poetry. For his contributions to the development of Syriac literature, has been praised as one of the most learned and versatile writers among Syriac Orthodox Christians.
Go to Profile#3741
Erdmann Neumeister
1671 - 1756 (85 years)
Erdmann Neumeister was a German Lutheran pastor and hymnologist. He was born in Uichteritz near Weißenfels in the province Saxonia of Germany. As a fifteen-year-old boy he started his studies in Schulpforta, an old humanistic gymnasium. He became a student of poetology and theology in the University of Leipzig between 1691 and 1697. He began his career as a minister of religion in the spa town of Bibra. He became diaconus for the duke of Saxonia-Weissenfels. From 1705 to 1715, he was superintendent in Sorau . He left for Hamburg because of theological disputes. . He died in Hamburg as an honoured main pastor.
Go to Profile#3742
James Moffatt
1870 - 1944 (74 years)
James Moffatt was a Scottish theologian and graduate of the University of Glasgow. Moffatt trained at the Free Church College, Glasgow, and was a practising minister at the United Free Church in Dundonald in the early years of his career. He received the degree Doctor of Divinity from the University of St Andrews in April 1902.
Go to Profile#3743
Adalbert Merx
1838 - 1909 (71 years)
Adalbert Merx was a German Protestant theologian and orientalist. Biography He studied at the University of Jena, where he became an associate professor in 1869. Subsequently, he was a full professor of philosophy at the University of Tübingen, and in 1873 a professor of theology at the University of Giessen. From 1875 till his death he was a professor of theology of the University of Heidelberg. In the course of his researches he made several journeys in the East.
Go to Profile#3744
Michael Baius
1513 - 1589 (76 years)
Michael Baius was a Belgian theologian. He formulated the school of thought now known as Baianism. Life He was born at Meslin L'Eveque near Ath in Hainaut as Michel De Bay, the son of Jean de Bay, a farmer. De Bay studied humanities in Brugelette and in Enghien and in 1533 he began studying philosophy at the Grand College het Varken of Leuven University. From 1535 he also studied theology at the Pope Adrian VI College. He was an excellent student and was ordained a priest in 1542, and was appointed director of the Standonck-College in Leuven.
Go to Profile#3745
Hans Asmussen
1898 - 1968 (70 years)
Hans Christian Asmussen was a German Evangelical and Lutheran theologian. Asmussen was a pastor in Altona, Hamburg. He was removed from office by the Nazis because of his activity in the Reich Fraternal Council of the Confessing Church. He was jailed several times before 1945. He was co-author of the protest "Word and Affirmation of Altona Pastors amid the Misery and Confusion of Public Life" , which rejected a pact with National Socialism and thus became a preliminary step toward the theological declaration of the Barmen Confessional Synod. From 1945 to 1948, Asmussen presided over the E...
Go to Profile#3746
Karl Friedrich Stäudlin
1761 - 1826 (65 years)
Karl Friedrich Stäudlin was a German Protestant theologian born in Stuttgart. He studied theology in Tübingen, and from 1790 was a professor of theology at the University of Göttingen, where remained for nearly 36 years. In 1803 he was appointed Consistorialrath.
Go to Profile#3747
Frederick Temple
1821 - 1902 (81 years)
Frederick Temple was an English academic, teacher and churchman, who served as Bishop of Exeter , Bishop of London and Archbishop of Canterbury . Early life Temple was born in Santa Maura, one of the Ionian Islands, the son of Major Octavius Temple, who was subsequently appointed lieutenant-governor of Sierra Leone. On his retirement, Major Temple settled in Devon and contemplated a farming life for his son Frederick, giving him a practical training to that end.
Go to Profile#3748
Albert Kalthoff
1850 - 1906 (56 years)
Albert Kalthoff was a German Protestant theologian, who along with Emil Felden , Oscar Mauritz , Moritz Schwalb and Friedrich Steudel formed a group in Bremen, named the Deutscher Monistenbund , who no longer believed in Jesus as a historical figure.
Go to Profile#3749
Johann Georg Neumann
1661 - 1709 (48 years)
Johann Georg Neumann was a German Lutheran theologian and church historian. Born in Mörz and educated in Zittau, Neuman enrolled in Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg in 15 May 1680, receiving the rank of magister in less than a year, on 25 April 1681 and he became a member of the philosophical faculty in 1684, and full professor for poetics in 1690. Neumann then decided to study theology and began to hold sermons. He received his doctorate in theology in 1692 and became ordinary professor of theology in Wittenberg. Neumann was a pronounced opponent of Pietism and outspoken critic...
Go to Profile#3750
Bessarion
1403 - 1472 (69 years)
Bessarion was a Byzantine Greek Renaissance humanist, theologian, Catholic cardinal and one of the famed Greek scholars who contributed to the so-called great revival of letters in the 15th century.
Go to Profile