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,
#3751
Joseph Kleutgen
1811 - 1883 (72 years)
Joseph Wilhelm Karl Kleutgen was a German Jesuit theologian and philosopher. He was a member of the Society of Jesus, and contributed significantly to the establishment of Neo-scholasticism. Life Kleutgen was born in Dortmund, Westphalia. He began his studies with the intention of becoming a priest, but owing to the Protestant atmosphere of the school which he attended, his zeal for religion gradually cooled. From 28 April 1830, to 8 January 1831, he studied philology at the University of Munich. He was intensely interested in Plato's philosophy and the Greek tragic poets. As member of the ...
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Werner Elert
1885 - 1954 (69 years)
Werner August Friedrich Immanuel Elert was a German Lutheran theologian and professor of both church history and systematic theology at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. His writings in the fields of Christian dogmatics, ethics, and history have had great influence on modern Christianity in general and modern Lutheranism in particular.
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Carl Stange
1870 - 1959 (89 years)
Carl Stange was a German Protestant theologian and philosopher. In his work, he mainly dealt with issues of ethics and the philosophy of religion. He studied theology, history and philosophy at the universities of Halle, Göttingen, Leipzig and Jena, obtaining his habilitation for systematic theology in 1895 at Halle. In 1903 he became an associate professor at the University of Königsberg, and during the following year, was named a full professor of systematic theology at the University of Greifswald, where in 1911/12 he served as university rector. In 1912 he was appointed professor of syste...
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Johann Georg Rosenmüller
1736 - 1815 (79 years)
Johann Georg Rosenmüller , a German Protestant theologian, was born at Ummerstadt in Hildburghausen, on 18 December 1736. He was appointed Professor of Theology at Erlangen in 1773, Primarius Professor of Theology at Erlangen in 1773, Primarius Professor of Divinity at Giessen in 1783, and was called in 1785 to Leipzig, where he remained until his death in 1815. His two sons were Ernst Friedrich Karl Rosenmüller, and Johann Christian Rosenmüller.
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Ezra Stiles
1727 - 1795 (68 years)
Ezra Stiles was an American educator, academic, Congregationalist minister, theologian, and author. He is noted as the seventh president of Yale College and one of the founders of Brown University. According to religious historian Timothy L. Hall, Stiles' tenure at Yale distinguishes him as "one of the first great American college presidents."
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Mesrop Mashtots
361 - 440 (79 years)
Mesrop Mashtots was an early Medieval Armenian linguist, composer, theologian, statesman, and hymnologist in the Sasanian Empire. He is venerated as a saint in the Armenian Apostolic Church, the Armenian Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches. He is best known for inventing the Armenian alphabet AD, which was a fundamental step in strengthening Armenian national identity. He is also considered to be the creator of the Caucasian Albanian and Georgian alphabets by a number of scholars.
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Johann Joachim Lange
1670 - 1744 (74 years)
Johann Joachim Lange was a German Protestant theologian and philosopher. Lange was born in Gardelegen and educated in Leipzig, Erfurt and Halle. He was influenced by Christian Thomasius and the pietist August Hermann Francke. He became a professor of theology at Halle in 1709, and opposed the philosophy of Christian Wolff. He died in Halle on 7 May 1744.
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Thomas Wolsey
1473 - 1530 (57 years)
Thomas Wolsey was an English statesman and Catholic bishop. When Henry VIII became King of England in 1509, Wolsey became the king's almoner. Wolsey's affairs prospered and by 1514 he had become the controlling figure in virtually all matters of state. He also held important ecclesiastical appointments. These included the Archbishop of York—the second most important role in the English church—and that of papal legate. His appointment as a cardinal by Pope Leo X in 1515 gave him precedence over all other English clergy.
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Pierius
201 - Present (1825 years)
Pierius was a Christian priest and probably head of the Catechetical School of Alexandria, conjointly with Achillas. He flourished while Theonas was bishop of Alexandria, and died at Rome after 309. The Roman Martyrology commemorates him on 4 November.
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Vincent Ferrer
1350 - 1419 (69 years)
Vincent Ferrer, OP was a Valencian Dominican friar and preacher, who gained acclaim as a missionary and a logician. He is honored as a saint of the Catholic Church and other churches of Catholic traditions.
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August Carl Eduard Baldamus
1812 - 1893 (81 years)
August Carl Eduard Baldamus was a German ornithologist. August Baldamus studied theology at the University of Berlin. In 1859 he became professor at the Gymnasium in Köthen where he met Carl Andreas Naumann and his brother Johann Friedrich Naumann both ornithologists. In 1849 he became Pastor in Diebzig, in 1859 moving to the same office in Osternienburg. He retired to Coburg in 1870. Baldamus was the founder of the Deutsche Ornithologen-Gesellschaft and published the ornithological journal Naumannia between 1849 and 1858.
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Luigi Taparelli
1793 - 1862 (69 years)
Luigi Taparelli was an Italian Jesuit scholar of the Society of Jesus and counter-revolutionary who coined the term social justice and elaborated the principles of subsidiarity, as part of his natural law theory of just social order. He was the brother of the Italian statesman Massimo d'Azeglio.
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Étienne Tempier
1210 - 1279 (69 years)
Étienne Tempier was a French bishop of Paris during the 13th century. He was Chancellor of the Sorbonne from 1263 to 1268, and bishop of Paris from 1268 until his death. He is best remembered for promulgating a Condemnation of 219 philosophical and theological propositions that addressed concepts that were being disputed in the faculty of arts at the University of Paris.
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Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya
1292 - 1350 (58 years)
Shams ad-Dīn Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn Abī Bakr ibn Ayyūb az-Zurʿī d-Dimashqī l-Ḥanbalī , commonly known as Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya or Ibn al-Qayyim for short, or reverentially as Imam Ibn al-Qayyim in Sunni tradition, was an important medieval Islamic jurisconsult, theologian, and spiritual writer. Belonging to the Hanbali school of orthodox Sunni jurisprudence, of which he is regarded as "one of the most important thinkers," Ibn al-Qayyim was also the foremost disciple and student of Ibn Taymiyyah, with whom he was imprisoned in 1326 for dissenting against established tradition during Ib...
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Wu Leichuan
1870 - 1944 (74 years)
Wu Leichuan was a leading Chinese theologian in the early 20th century and Chancellor of Yenching University. Biography From his childhood, Wu poured his energy into mastering the Confucian classics and working his way up through the imperial examinations, obtaining the level of Jìnshì in 1898 in Beijing after passing the metropolitan and imperial examinations. He converted to Christianity in 1915 and became Yenching University's first Chinese vice-president and chancellor between 1926 and 1934.
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Wilhelm Bousset
1865 - 1920 (55 years)
Wilhelm Bousset was a German theologian and New Testament scholar. He was of Huguenot ancestry and a native of Lübeck. His most influential work was Kyrios Christos, an attempt to explain the origins of devotion to Christ as the product of second century Hellenistic forces, and is still the most widely influential academic work on early Christology, even if its conclusions are not supported by modern scholarship.
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Willibald Beyschlag
1823 - 1900 (77 years)
Johann Heinrich Christoph Willibald Beyschlag was a German theologian from Frankfurt am Main. Biography He studied theology at the Universities of Bonn and Berlin, afterwards serving as an assistant pastor in Koblenz , then as a pastor in Trier . During the following year, Beyschlag began working as a religious instructor in Mainz. In 1856 he became a court preacher in Karlsruhe, and four years later, he was appointed a professor of practical theology and New Testament exegesis at the University of Halle.
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Edward Beecher
1803 - 1895 (92 years)
Edward Beecher was an American theologian, the son of Lyman Beecher and the brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe and Henry Ward Beecher. Biography Beecher was born August 27, 1803, in East Hampton, New York. He graduated from Yale College in 1822. After this, he studied theology at Andover Theological School.
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Johann Ernst Immanuel Walch
1725 - 1778 (53 years)
Johann Ernst Immanuel Walch was a German theologian, linguist, and naturalist from Jena. Life The son of the theologian Johann Georg Walch, he studied Semitic languages at the University of Jena, and also natural science and mathematics. In 1749 he published Einleitung in die Harmonie der Evangelien, and in 1750 was appointed professor extraordinarius of theology. Five years later he became professor ordinarius of logic and metaphysics; in 1759 he exchanged this for a professorship of rhetoric and poetry.
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Karl Gottlieb Bretschneider
1776 - 1848 (72 years)
Karl Gottlieb Bretschneider was a German Protestant scholar and theologian from Gersdorf, Saxony. He is noted for, among other things, having planned and founded the monumental Corpus Reformatorum. He is the father of Carl Anton Bretschneider, a mathematician.
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Christoph Friedrich von Ammon
1766 - 1850 (84 years)
Christoph Friedrich von Ammon was a German theological writer and preacher. He was born at Bayreuth, Bavaria and died at Dresden. He studied at Erlangen, held various professorships in the philosophical and theological faculties of Erlangen and Göttingen, succeeded Franz Volkmar Reinhard in 1813 as court preacher and member of the Upper Consistory of the Church of Saxony at Dresden, retired from these offices in 1849. Seeking to establish for himself a middle position between rationalism and supernaturalism, he declared for a "rational supernaturalism," and contended that there must be a gradual development of Christian doctrine corresponding to the advance of knowledge and science.
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Eusebius Amort
1692 - 1775 (83 years)
Eusebius Amort was a German Roman Catholic theologian. Life Amort was born at Bibermuhle, near Tolz, in Upper Bavaria. He studied at Munich, and at an early age joined the Canons Regular at Polling, where, shortly after his ordination in 1717, he taught theology and philosophy. The Parnassus Boicus learned society was based on a plan started in 1720 by three Augustinian fathers: Eusebius Amort, Gelasius Hieber , a famous preacher in the German language and Agnellus Kandler , a genealogist and librarian. The initial plans fell through, but in 1722 they issued the first volume of the Parnassus...
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Gaston Fessard
1897 - 1978 (81 years)
Gaston Fessard was a French Jesuit and theologian. Father Fessard was the author of the first issue of Cahiers du Témoignage chrétien in November 1941, titled "France, Beware the Loss of Your Soul," which opposed Nazism in the name of Christian values. He also argued against the obligation to obey the Vichy government, elaborating his theory of the "slave prince," borrowed from Clausewitz: it is useful to obey the prince while he is sovereign and acts in the common interest, but resistance becomes necessary when the sovereignty of the slave-prince is limited and actions are dictated by the occupier.
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Berengar of Tours
990 - 1088 (98 years)
Berengar of Tours , in Latin Berengarius Turonensis, was an 11th-century French Christian theologian and archdeacon of Angers, a scholar whose leadership of the cathedral school at Chartres set an example of intellectual inquiry through the revived tools of dialectic that was soon followed at cathedral schools of Laon and Paris. Berengar of Tours was distinguished from mainline Catholic theology by two views: his assertion of the supremacy of Scripture and his denial of transubstantiation.
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Franz Joseph Dölger
1879 - 1940 (61 years)
Franz Joseph Dölger was a German Catholic theologian and church historian. He studied theology at the University of Würzburg, being ordained into the priesthood in 1902. Afterwards he worked as a chaplain in Amorbach and Würzburg, and in June 1904, obtained his doctorate in theology.
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August Wilhelm Knobel
1807 - 1863 (56 years)
August Wilhelm Karl Knobel was a German Protestant theologian born in Tzschecheln near Sorau, Niederlausitz. From 1826 he studied philosophy, philology and theology at the University of Breslau, earning his doctorate in 1831. Afterwards, he became a lecturer, and later an associate professor at Breslau. In 1838 he became a professor of theology at Breslau, and shortly afterwards relocated to the University of Giessen.
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Muhsin al-Hakim
1889 - 1970 (81 years)
Muhsin al-Tabatabaei al-Hakim was an Iraqi Shia religious authority. He became the leading marja' of Najaf in 1946 after the death of Abu al-Hasan al-Isfahani, and of the majority of the Shia world in 1961, after the death of Hossein Borujerdi.
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Johann Wilhelm Petersen
1649 - 1727 (78 years)
Johann Wilhelm Petersen was a German theologian, mystic, and Millennialist. Johann Wilhelm Petersen grew up in Lübeck and studied theology at the Katharineum in Lübeck, as well as in Giessen, Rostock, Leipzig, Wittenberg and Jena. He studied with Philipp Jakob Spener in Frankfurt, and they became friends in 1675. Through his affiliation with Spener, Petersen became interested in Pietism.
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Seakle Greijdanus
1871 - 1948 (77 years)
Seakle Greijdanus was a Reformed theologian in the Netherlands, who first served in the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands and later in the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands . Greijdanus was born in Arum, Friesland and studied theology at the Free University in Amsterdam, where he specialized in dogmatics.
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Edwards Amasa Park
1808 - 1900 (92 years)
Edwards Amasa Park was an American Congregational theologian. Biography Born in Providence, Rhode Island, Park was the son of Calvin Park . Edwards Amasa Park graduated at Brown University in 1826, was a teacher at Braintree for two years, and in 1831 graduated from Andover Theological Seminary. He was co-pastor of the orthodox Congregational church of Braintree in 1831-1833; professor of mental and moral philosophy at Amherst in 1835; and Bartlet professor of sacred rhetoric , and Abbot professor of Christian theology at Andover. He died at Andover on 4 June 1900.
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Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples
1450 - 1537 (87 years)
Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples was a French theologian and a leading figure in French humanism. He was a precursor of the Protestant movement in France. The "d'Étaples" was not part of his name as such, but used to distinguish him from Jacques Lefèvre of Deventer, a less significant contemporary who was a friend and correspondent of Erasmus. Both are also sometimes called by the German version of their name, Jacob/Jakob Faber. He himself had a sometimes tense relationship with Erasmus, whose work on Biblical translation and in theology closely paralleled his own.
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Édouard Guillaume Eugène Reuss
1804 - 1891 (87 years)
Edouard Guillaume Eugène Reuss was a Protestant theologian from Alsace. Life He was born at Strasbourg, where he studied philology . He went on to study theology at Göttingen under Johann Gottfried Eichhorn; and Oriental Languages at Halle under Wilhelm Gesenius, and afterwards at Paris under Silvestre de Sacy . In 1828 he became Privatdozent at Strasbourg. From 1829 to 1834 he taught Biblical criticism and Oriental languages at the Strasbourg Theological School; he then became assistant, and afterwards, in 1836, regular professor of theology at that university. He became Professor of Old Testament at the same institution in 1864.
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William Robertson Smith
1846 - 1894 (48 years)
William Robertson Smith was a Scottish orientalist, Old Testament scholar, professor of divinity, and minister of the Free Church of Scotland. He was an editor of the Encyclopædia Britannica and contributor to the Encyclopaedia Biblica. He is also known for his book Religion of the Semites, which is considered a foundational text in the comparative study of religion.
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Petrus Hofstede de Groot
1802 - 1886 (84 years)
Petrus Hofstede de Groot , Dutch theologian, was born at Leer in East Friesland, and was educated at the Gymnasium and University of Groningen. For three years he was pastor of the Reformed Church at Ulrum, and then entered upon his lifelong duties as professor of theology at Groningen. With his colleagues Louis Gerlach Pareau, Johan Frederik van Oordt, and Willem Muurling, he edited from 1837 to 1872 the Waarheid in Liefde. In this review and in his numerous books he vigorously upheld the orthodox faith against the Dutch "modern theology" movement. He became professor emeritus in 1872, and d...
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Martin Kähler
1835 - 1912 (77 years)
Martin Kähler was a German theologian. He is best known for his short work, published in 1892, Der sogenannte historische Jesus und der geschichtliche, biblische Christus . Kähler was born in Neuhausen near Königsberg and died in Freudenstadt. He had a profound impact upon the famous Protestant theologian, Paul Tillich.
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Friedrich von Hügel
1852 - 1925 (73 years)
Friedrich von Hügel was an influential Austrian Catholic layman, religious writer, and Christian apologist. Although classified with Modernistss due to his friendships with Alfred Loisy and George Tyrrell, von Hügel rejected the Modernist theory of belief.
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Martín de Azpilcueta
1492 - 1586 (94 years)
Martín de Azpilcueta , or Doctor Navarrus, was an important Spanish canonist and theologian in his time, and an early economist who independently formulated the quantity theory of money in 1556. Life He was born in Barásoain, Navarre, and was a relative of Francis Xavier. He obtained a degree in theology at Alcalá, then in 1518 he obtained a degree of doctor in canon law from Toulouse in France. Beginning in 1524, Azpilcueta served in several canon law chairs at the University of Salamanca. From 1538 to 1556, he taught at Coimbra University in Portugal, at the invitation of the kings of Portu...
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John Henry Cardinal Newman
#3789
Lady Amin
1886 - 1983 (97 years)
Hajiyeh Seyyedeh Nosrat Begum Amin, also known as Banu Amin, Lady Amin , was Iran's most outstanding female jurisprudent, theologian and great Muslim mystic of the 20th century, a Lady Mujtahideh. She received numerous ijazahs of ijtihad, among them from Ayatollahs Muḥammad Kazim Ḥusayni Shīrāzī and Grand Ayatullah ‘arif , the founder of the Qom seminaries . She also granted numerous ijazahs of ijtihad to female and male scholars, among them Sayyid Mar'ashi Najafi.
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Ludwig Adolf Petri
1803 - 1873 (70 years)
Petri, Ludwig Adolf was a German Neo-Lutheran clergyman. Life He was born at Lüthorst , and was educated at the University of Göttingen and, after being a private tutor for some time, became, in 1829, "collaborator" at the Kreuzkirche in Hanover, where he was assistant pastor from 1837 until 1851, and senior pastor from 1851 until his death. During the years 1830–37 his convictions gradually changed from rationalistic to orthodox. His power as a preacher was especially shown by his Licht des Lebens and Salz der Erde . For the improvement of the liturgy of his communion he wrote Bedürfnisse ...
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Ahmad Ghazali
1100 - 1126 (26 years)
Ahmad Ghazālī was a Sunni Muslim Persian Sufi mystic, writer, preacher and the head of Al-Nizamiyya of Baghdad . He is best known in the history of Islam for his ideas on love and the meaning of love, expressed primarily in the book Sawāneḥ.
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Siger of Brabant
1235 - 1284 (49 years)
Siger of Brabant was a 13th-century philosopher from the southern Low Countries who was an important proponent of Averroism. Life Early life Little is known about many of the details of his life. In 1266, he was attached to the Faculty of Arts in the University of Paris at the time when a riot erupted between the French and Picard "nations" of students—a series of loosely organized fraternities. The papal legate threatened Siger with execution as the ringleader of the Picard attack on the French, but no further action was taken.
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Sibrandus Lubbertus
1556 - 1625 (69 years)
Sibrandus Lubbertus was a Dutch Calvinist theologian and was a professor of theology at the University of Franeker for forty years from the institute's foundation in 1585. He was a prominent participant in the Synod of Dort . His primary works were to counter Roman Catholic doctrine and to oppose Socinianism and Arminianism.
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Bernhard Lichtenberg
1875 - 1943 (68 years)
Bernhard Lichtenberg was a German Catholic priest who became known for repeatedly speaking out, after the rise of Adolf Hitler and during the Holocaust, against the persecution and deportation of the Jews. After serving a jail sentence, he died in the custody of the Gestapo on his way to Dachau concentration camp. Raul Hilberg wrote: "Thus a solitary figure had made his singular gesture. In the buzz of rumormongers and sensation seekers, Bernhard Lichtenberg fought almost alone."
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Wilhelm Gass
1813 - 1889 (76 years)
Wilhelm Gass was a German theologian born in Breslau. He was the son of theologian Joachim Christian Gass . He received his education in Breslau, Halle and Berlin, and as a student was influenced by the teachings of August Neander . In 1846 he became an associate professor at the University of Breslau, and during the following year relocated to Greifswald, where in 1855 he achieved the title of professor ordinarius. In 1862 he was appointed professor of systematic theology at the University of Giessen, and in 1868 moved to Heidelberg as a successor to Richard Rothe . He died in 1889 in Heidel...
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Harald Høffding
1843 - 1931 (88 years)
Harald Høffding was a Danish philosopher and theologian. Life Born and educated in Copenhagen, he became a schoolmaster, and ultimately in 1883 a professor at the University of Copenhagen. He was strongly influenced by Søren Kierkegaard in his early development, but later became a positivist, retaining and combining with it the spirit and method of practical psychology and the critical school. The physicist Niels Bohr studied philosophy from and became a friend of Høffding. The philosopher and author Ágúst H. Bjarnason was a student of Høffding.
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Friedrich August Berthold Nitzsch
1832 - 1898 (66 years)
Friedrich August Berthold Nitzsch was a German theologian. The son of Karl Immanuel Nitzsch, he became professor ordinarius of theology at Gießen in 1868 and at Kiel in 1872. He was the author of Das System des Boethius and Grundriss der christlichen Dogmengeschichte, t. I, Die patristische Periode , amongst other texts.
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Johann Wilhelm Friedrich Höfling
1802 - 1853 (51 years)
Johann Wilhelm Friedrich Höfling was a German Lutheran theologian born in Neudrossenfeld, Bavaria. He specialized in the field of liturgical science. He studied philology and theology at Erlangen, and following his theological exam served as a vicar in Würzburg and as a minister in Nuremberg . In 1831 he earned his doctorate in philosophy at Tübingen, and in 1835 received his theological degree. In 1833 he was appointed professor of practical theology at the University of Erlangen. He died in Munich.
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Friedrich Adolph Lampe
1683 - 1729 (46 years)
Friedrich Adolph Lampe was a German Pietist pastor, theologian and professor of dogmatics. He was a Cocceian, and follower of Johannes d'Outrein. He is known as the first Pietist leader from a Calvinist rather than Lutheran background.
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Andrews Norton
1786 - 1853 (67 years)
Andrews Norton was an American preacher and theologian. Along with William Ellery Channing, he was the leader of mainstream Unitarianism of the early and middle 19th century, and was known as the "Unitarian Pope". He was the father of the writer Charles Eliot Norton.
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