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,
#3851
Thomas Halliwell
1900 - 1982 (82 years)
Thomas Halliwell was the Principal of Trinity College Carmarthen in the middle part of the 20th Century. Early life and education Thomas Halliwell was born in Wigan in 1900, the only child of John Halliwell, a noted Lancashire cricketer, and his wife Annie whose father was company secretary to Pearson and Knowles. Educated at Wigan Wesleyan Methodist School and Wigan Grammar School, Halliwell left school at age 15 to work in the Midland Bank.
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Thomas Jarrett
1805 - 1882 (77 years)
Thomas Jarrett, DD, was an English churchman and orientalist. Life He was educated at St. Catharine's College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in 1827 as thirty-fourth wrangler, and seventh in the first class of the classical tripos. In the following year he was elected a Fellow of his college, where he stayed as classical and Hebrew lecturer until 1832.
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H. B. Sharman
1865 - 1953 (88 years)
Henry Burton Sharman was a Canadian Christian theologian. Biography Henry Burton Sharman was born 12 August 1865, in Stratford, Ontario, the eldest of eleven children. After attending school in Stratford, Sharman entered the Ontario Agricultural College at Guelph in 1882 where he received a Diploma in Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Science in 1884. He traveled to England while at Guelph to import Hereford cattle. In 1885 he worked as a book-keeper at his father's foundry. In the following year, the family moved to Manitoba where his father and uncles had purchased large tracts of farm land....
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William of Pagula
1290 - 1332 (42 years)
William of Pagula , also known as William Paull or William Poull, was a 14th-century English canon lawyer and theologian best known for his written works, particularly his manual for priests entitled the Oculus Sacerdotis. Pagula was made the perpetual vicar of the church at Winkfield on 5 March 1314, although he was absent from his parish for several years while pursuing a doctorate in Canon Law from the University of Oxford. After this was granted he returned to work with his parish, and his writings are written from the perspective of someone familiar with the job of a rural priest.
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James Stewart
1896 - 1990 (94 years)
James Stuart Stewart was a minister of the Church of Scotland. He taught New Testament Language, Literature and Theology at the University of Edinburgh . Educated at the High School of Dundee and the University of St Andrews from 1913, he took a first in classics . His studies were interrupted by service in France with the Royal Engineers . After the war he pursued divinity at New College, Edinburgh, then a United Free Church of Scotland institution, with postgraduate work at the University of Bonn and an assistantship at Barclay Church, Edinburgh. He was minister of North Morningside Parish Church.
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Friedrich Myconius
1490 - 1546 (56 years)
Friedrich Myconius was a German Lutheran theologian and Protestant reformer. He was a colleague of Martin Luther. Myconius was born in Lichtenfels, Bavaria, and he was educated there and at Annaberg, where he had an encounter with Johann Tetzel, a Dominican, in a disagreement over indulgences. His teacher, named Staffelstein, persuaded him in 1510 to enter the Franciscan order. That same night a dream turned his thoughts towards the religious standpoint which he subsequently reached as a Lutheran. From Annaberg he passed to Franciscan communities at Leipzig and Weimar, where he was ordained priest in 1516.
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Willem Christiaan van Manen
1842 - 1905 (63 years)
Willem Christiaan van Manen was a Dutch theologian. He was professor in early Christian literature and New Testament exegesis at Leiden University and belonged to the Dutch school of Radical Criticism.
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Isaac-Bénédict Prévost
1755 - 1819 (64 years)
Isaac-Bénédict Prévost was a Swiss Protestant theologian and naturalist who was one of the first to identify fungal infection of plants and to find treatments to avoid them. Prévost was born in Geneva to Jean-Jacques Prévost and Marie-Élisabeth Henri. A cousin was the ophthalmologist Pierre Prévost. Little is known of his early life but he chose science to a career in business after apprenticing in a grocery. He became interested in science after reading the work of the astronomer Duc-la-Chapelle. In 1777, he became a private tutor to the sons of Delmas in Montauban. He founded a society for science in Montauban.
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Nils Johan Ekdahl
1799 - 1870 (71 years)
Nils Johan Ekdahl was a Swedish theologian, political writer and cultural historian. Student in Lund in 1820, ordination as pastor in 1822, employed as a preacher in Stockholm in 1825. In his spare time, he devoted himself to historical and archaeological research, and traveled from 1827 to 1830 through the landscape of Norrland in the north of Sweden, about which he reports in his treatise Om vattuminskningen i norra poltrakterna . In his last years of life Ekdahl was also a staunch supporter of the Icelandic theologian Magnús Eiríksson , of whom he translated two books into Swedish.
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Andreas Fischer
1480 - 1540 (60 years)
Andreas Fischer was an Austrian/Moravian Anabaptist, and associate of Oswald Glaidt. He first appears as an Anabaptist leader in the public records in 1528 in Silesia, as a literary opponent of Caspar Schwenckfeldt's associate, Valentine Crautwald. His main written work is "Scepastes Decologi," in which he defended not only adult baptism but also the reinstitution of Saturday/Sabbath keeping as a Christian practice. This work is lost, but its main arguments are carefully reconstructed by Daniel Liechty based on Crautwald's tract against it Fischer spent the 1530s moving back and forth betw...
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John Dickie
1875 - 1942 (67 years)
John Dickie was a Scottish-New Zealand presbyterian theologian and professor. Life He was born in Aberdeen, Scotland on 20 May 1875. After growing up in the Buchan District of North East Scotland, Dickie attended University in Aberdeen in 1891, graduating with an MA in classics. He taught at public schools for two years after graduating, before beginning theological studies at the University of Edinburgh, a decision that was influenced by Professor Flint. He won many scholarships and prizes every year during his studying, and worked as an assistant to many parishes throughout England.
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Franciscus Haraeus
1555 - 1631 (76 years)
Franciscus Haraeus , , was a theologian, historian, and cartographer from the Low Countries. He is best known for his history of the origins of the Dutch Revolt, written from a Catholic perspective but without polemical bias. He was one of the first cartographers to make thematic maps and globes.
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Al-Juwayni
1028 - 1085 (57 years)
Dhia' ul-Dīn 'Abd al-Malik ibn Yūsuf al-Juwaynī al-Shafi'ī was a Persian Sunni scholar famous for being the foremost leading jurisconsult, legal theoretician and Islamic theologian of his time. His name is commonly abbreviated as al-Juwayni; he is also commonly referred to as Imam al-Haramayn meaning "leading master of the two holy cities", that is, Mecca and Medina. He acquired the status of a mujtahid in the field of fiqh and usul al-fiqh. Highly celebrated as one of the most important and influential thinkers in the Shafi'i school of orthodox Sunni jurisprudence, he was considered as the virtual second founder of the Shafi'i school, after its first founder Imam al-Shafi'i.
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Anthony Champney
1569 - 1643 (74 years)
Anthony Champney was an English Roman Catholic priest and controversialist. Life He studied at Reims and Rome . As priest he was imprisoned at Wisbech Castle, and was active against the Jesuits, acting later for the Appellant Clergy in Rome .
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George Lokert
1485 - 1547 (62 years)
George Lokert of Ayr was a Scottish philosopher and theologian who made significant contributions to the study of logic. A pupil of John Mair, he also studied and taught at the University of Paris, and eventually served as prior of the Sorbonne. Returning to Scotland in 1521, he served as Rector of the University of St Andrews .
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Jean Le Clerc
1657 - 1736 (79 years)
Jean Le Clerc, also Johannes Clericus , was a Genevan theologian and biblical scholar. He was famous for promoting exegesis, or critical interpretation of the Bible, and was a radical of his age. He parted with Calvinism over his interpretations and left Geneva for that reason.
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John Pitts
1560 - 1616 (56 years)
John Pitts was an English Roman Catholic scholar and writer. Life Pitts was born in Alton, Hampshire in 1560 and attended Winchester College. From 1578 to 1580 he studied at New College, Oxford. In 1581 he was admitted to the English College, Rome.
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Sisto Fabri
1540 - 1594 (54 years)
Sisto Fabri was a theologian and canon lawyer of the Dominican Order who was appointed Master of the Sacred Palace by Pope Gregory XIII serving from 1580 to 1583, and Master of the Order of Preachers from 1583 to 1589.
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Fazlullah Nouri
1843 - 1909 (66 years)
Sheikh Fazlollah bin Abbas Mazindarani , also known as Fazlollah Noori , was a major figure in Iranian Constitutional Revolution as a Twelver Shia Muslim scholar and politically connected mullah of the court of Iran's Shah. Originally a supporter of the constitution, he turned against it after the supporting constitution shah died and was replaced by one opposing the constitution. He was hanged as a traitor in 1909 by a court of the constitutionalist government for "sowing corruption and sedition on earth".
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Antoine-Joseph Mège
1625 - 1691 (66 years)
Antoine-Joseph Mège was a French Benedictine of the Congregation of St. Maur. He is known for his commentary on the Rule of St. Benedict. Life On 17 March 1643, he became a Benedictine at the monastery of Vendôme. In 1659 he taught theology at the Abbey of St. Denis and afterwards devoted himself to preaching.
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Louis de Dieu
1590 - 1642 (52 years)
Louis de Dieu was a Dutch Protestant minister and a leading orientalist. His grandfather had served at the court of Charles V, and his father, Daniel de Dieu, was also a protestant minister and linguist. Louis was educated at Leiden, where he was regent of the Walloon College . He declined the chair of theology and oriental languages at Utrecht.
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Josef Jungmann
1830 - 1885 (55 years)
Josef Jungmann was a German-Austrian Catholic theologian. Life From 1850 he studied theology and philosophy at the Collegium Germanicum in Rome, becoming ordained as a priest in 1855. In 1857 he became a member of the Society of Jesus, and during the following year, relocated as a lecturer to the University of Innsbruck. At Innsbruck, he became a professor of ecclesiastical eloquence and catechetics at the university as well as a professor of liturgy at the theological konvikt.
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Arlotto of Prato
1201 - 1286 (85 years)
Arlotto of Prato was an Italian Franciscan theologian. He became Minister General of the Order of Friars Minor at the end of his life. Arlotto is known also for the Quaestio de Aeternitate Mundi, and as a Biblical scholar. He compiled a Bible concordance, of the Latin Vulgate. This is sometimes cited as the first such. It was in fact based on an earlier thirteenth century work of Hugh of St. Cher. The Jewish Encyclopedia states that Arlotto's work was then used as a model for a Hebrew Bible concordance, by Isaac Nathan ben Kalonymus.
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Lancelotto Politi
1484 - 1553 (69 years)
Lancelotto Politi was an Italian Dominican canon lawyer, theologian and bishop. Historians and theologians generally have regarded Catharinus as a brilliant eccentric. He was frequently accused of teaching false doctrines, yet always kept within the bounds of orthodoxy.
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Cornelius Johannes Barchman Wuytiers
1692 - 1733 (41 years)
Cornelius Johannes Barchman Wuytiers served as the Old Catholic Archbishop of Utrecht from 1725 to 1733. Early life and schooling Barchman Wuytiers was born into a noble family. He was educated at the Oratorian schools in Huissen, Louvain and Paris. According to Bellegarde, years before Barchman Wuytiers went to Paris, Pashasius Quesnel had prophesied that Barchman Wuytiers would one day be Archbishop of Utrecht.
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Nicolas des Gallars
1520 - 1580 (60 years)
Nicolas des Gallars [in Lat. Gallasius] , was a Calvinist pastor and theologian . Life Gallars was of noble birth, and "possessed legal training, rich exposure to the humanities, and polished Latin." He first appears as author of a Defensio of William Farel, published at Geneva in 1545, followed by translations into French of three tracts by John Calvin. Scott Manetsch notes that Gallars' appointment "signaled an important new stage in Calvin's recruitment efforts." In 1551 Gallars was admitted bourgeois of Geneva, and in 1553 made pastor of the church in Jussy.
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Michael Vehe
1485 - 1539 (54 years)
Michael Vehe was a German monk and theologian. Life Vehe was born in Biberach . He joined the Dominicans in Wimpfen and was sent to Heidelberg in 1506, where he taught in 1512 and received a doctorate in theology in 1513. In 1515 he was appointed regent of the Dominican house of studies at Heidelberg; later Cardinal Albert of Mainz chose him as theologian and put him in charge of the church of Halle, Saxony. He was summoned to Augsburg in 1530 to refute the Lutheran Confession of Faith and took a prominent part in a debate against the Lutherans in 1534 in Leipzig. He was called to the bishopric of Halberstadt on February 21, 1539.
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Juan de Dicastillo
1584 - 1653 (69 years)
Juan de Dicastillo was a Spanish Jesuit theologian. He was born in Naples. He entered the novitiate of the Society of Jesus in 1600, and was professor of theology for twenty-five years at Toledo, Murcia, and Vienna. He died in Ingolstadt.
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Edmund O'Reilly
1811 - 1878 (67 years)
Edmund James O'Reilly was an Irish Jesuit Catholic theologian. Biography Edmund James O'Reilly was born in London, England, United Kingdom, on 30 April 1811. He was educated at Clongowes and Maynooth and studied theology for seven years in the Roman College in Rome. He then gained the decree of Doctor of Divinity by a "public act" de iniversa theologia.
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George Gillespie
1613 - 1648 (35 years)
George Gillespie was a Scottish theologian. His father was John Gillespie, minister of Kirkcaldy. He studied at St Andrews University, and is said to have graduated M.A. 1629, though the date is probably that on which he entered the University. He became bursar of the Presbytery of Kirkcaldy. He became chaplain to John Viscount Kenmure; to John, Earl of Cassilis, and tutor to his son, James, Lord Kennedy. He was ordained to Wemyss on 26 April 1638. He had calls to Aberdeen and St Andrews. He was translated to Greyfriars, Edinburgh, 23 September 1642.
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Jean de Serres
1540 - 1598 (58 years)
Jean de Serres was a major French historian and an advisor to King Henry IV during the Wars of Religion that marred the French Reformation in the second half of the Sixteenth Century. As a refugee from religious persecution, he was educated in Switzerland and became a Calvinist pastor, humanist, poet, polemicist, and diplomat. His complete translation of Plato appeared in the famous 1578 edition published by Henri Estienne, which is the source of the standard 'Stephanus numbers' still used by scholars to refer to Plato's works. In 1596, de Serres was appointed 'Historian of France' by King Henry IV.
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Pierre Boquin
1518 - 1582 (64 years)
Pierre Boquin was a French Reformed Theologian who played a critical role in the Reformation of the Electoral Palatinate. Origins and early career Pierre Boquin was probably born after 1518 in Guyenne in Western France. He earned a doctorate in theology in 1539 at the University of Bourges. He was briefly a member of the Carmelite Order even serving as prior of the Bourges community before leaving in 1541 due to his turn toward Protestantism. He fled through Basel and Leipzig to Wittenberg. He joined the faculty of the Strasbourg Academy in 1542 as the successor of John Calvin.
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Richard FitzRalph
1295 - 1360 (65 years)
Richard FitzRalph was a scholastic philosopher, theologian, and Norman Irish Archbishop of Armagh during the 14th century. His thought exerted a significant influence on John Wycliffe's. Life FitzRalph was born into a well-off burgess family of Anglo-Norman/Hiberno-Norman descent in Dundalk, Ireland. He is noted as an ex-fellow and teacher of Balliol College, at the University of Oxford in 1325 . By 1331, he was a Regent master in Theology, and soon after was made Vice-Chancellor of the university; this was an almost unparalleled achievement for someone still in his early thirties, let alone ...
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Valborg Lerche
1873 - 1931 (58 years)
Valborg Lerche was a Norwegian social worker. She was the first female theologian in Norway. Biography She was born in Sem as a ship-owner Vincent Stoltenberg Lerche, Sr. and Christine Marie Rosenvinge , and a much younger half-sister of Vincent Stoltenberg Lerche. She also had four older sisters.
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Matthieu Cottière
1581 - 1656 (75 years)
Matthieu Cottière was a French Reformed pastor at Tours and theological writer. Life His parents were Simon Cottière or Couttière and Françoise Ribbe. He studied theology at Geneva to 1604, presenting a dissertation on justification. He then moved on to the University of Leiden, and took part in the series of debates on predestination and justification between Arminius and Gomarus.
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Johann Habermann
1516 - 1590 (74 years)
Johann Habermann, also Johannes Avenarius was a German Lutheran theologian. Life He was born at Eger on 10 August 1516. He went over to the Lutheran Church about 1540, studied theology, and filled a number of pastorates. After a brief academic activity at Jena and Wittenberg, in 1575, he accepted a call as superintendent of Naumburg-Zeitz.
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Stevenson McGill
1765 - 1840 (75 years)
Stevenson McGill was a Scottish Presbyterian minister of the Church of Scotland who served as Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1828. He was an author and was elected to be a professor of divinity at Glasgow University.
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Ibn al-Malahimi
1050 - 1141 (91 years)
Rukn al-dīn Maḥmūd ibn Muḥammad al-Malāḥimī al-Khuwārazmī was a Khwārazmian Islamic theologian of the Muʿtazilī and Ḥanafī schools. He wrote six works known by title, but of these only one is completely preserved and two partially; the rest are lost.
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Johann Dietenberger
1475 - 1537 (62 years)
Johann Dietenberger was a German Catholic Scholastic theologian. Education Born at Frankfurt-am-Main, he was educated in his native city, and joined the Dominican Order. On 3 June 1511, he registered at Cologne as a theological student; three years later, 23 September 1514, he was admitted to the licentiate, and the next year, after some time spent at Heidelberg and Mainz, received the doctor's degree.
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Georg Schomann
1539 - 1591 (52 years)
Georg Schomann was a Socinian theologian. In his youth, was distinguished by a deep Catholic religiosity. In the years 1552-1554 he studied at the Kraków Academy and then at Wittenberg, where he was Lutheran. He soon converted to Calvinism, and moved to Pińczów, where from 1558-1561 he taught at the local school and was a Protestant minister in churches in Pińczów and Książ. He was one of the authors of the Polish Brest Bible . In Pińczów he funded and founded a library, mainly the work of the Swiss reformers, for the sum of 40 ducats. Here, too, he married.
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Leonardo Marini
1509 - 1573 (64 years)
Leonardo Marini was an Italian theologian and archbishop of the Dominican Order of the Catholic Church. Biography Marini was born on the island of Chios, in the Aegean Sea, to a noble Genoese family. He entered the Dominican Order and studied theology.
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William Adams
1813 - 1897 (84 years)
William Adams was an American theologian and educator, co-founder of Nashotah House. William Adams was born on Monaghan, Ireland. He graduated from Trinity College with a Bachelor of Arts in 1838. He read law and medicine each for a year, and was for a time with his uncle at Ballyhaise as an accountant. He immigrated to New York City in 1839 and he entered the General Theological Seminary of the Protestant Episcopal church, graduating in 1841. He was ordained a deacon on July 1841, and a priest October 9, 1843.
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Willbur Fisk
1792 - 1839 (47 years)
Willbur Fisk was a prominent American Methodist minister, educator and theologian. He was the first President of Wesleyan University. Family background Fisk was born in Guilford, , Vermont on August 31, 1792. His father, the Hon. Isaiah Fisk , was from Massachusetts and descended from William Fisk who emigrated to America from England in about 1637. His mother, Hannah was also from Massachusetts and was descended from John Bacon who came to America in 1640. Isaiah and Hannah Fisk married on May 2, 1786, and moved to Guildford, where Isaiah's father, Amos Fisk, had purchased land at the outbreak of the American Revolution.
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A. N. Sattampillai
1823 - 1918 (95 years)
Arumai Nayakam Sattampillai , known popularly as Arumainayagam Sattampillai, Arumainayagam, Sattampillai or Suttampillai , a Tamilian convert of Anglican church, was a catechist and the founder of first indigenous and independent Hindu Church of Lord Jesus, rejecting Western missionaries domination for the first time in the history of Indian subcontinent. This subversion paved the way for the development of a fusion model of Hindu-Christian religion, free from European missionary interference and also inspired the Indian national movement, largely centred on Bengal and Madras Presidency to fi...
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Cornelius Sneek
1455 - 1534 (79 years)
Cornelius Sneek was a 15th-16th century Dominican priest and a member of the Congregation of Holland. He was a student of Alanus de Rupe and wrote one of the early works on the rosary. Sneek taught the Summa Theologica at Rostock.
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John Chapman
1704 - 1784 (80 years)
John Chapman was an English cleric and scholar, archdeacon of Sudbury from 1741. Life The son of the Rev. Walter Chapman, curate of Wareham, Dorset, then rector of Strathfieldsay, Hampshire, he was probably born in 1704, probably at Strathfieldsay. He was educated at Eton College, and elected to King's College, Cambridge, where he became A.B. 1727, and A. M. 1731. While tutor of his college, Charles Pratt, Jacob Bryant, and, for a short time, Horace Walpole were amongst his pupils.
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James Hardy Ropes
1866 - 1933 (67 years)
James Hardy Ropes was an American theologian. He graduated from Harvard College in 1889 and was an instructor there from 1895 to 1898 and an assistant professor until 1903. Ropes was then appointed the Bussey Professor of New Testament criticism. He occupied the Hollis Chair at Harvard Divinity School starting in 1910. He was also the Chairman of Commission on Extension Courses and Dean of the University Extension.
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Gerhard Schneemann
1829 - 1885 (56 years)
Gerhard Schneemann was a German Jesuit. Life After studying law for three years, he entered the seminary at Münster where he was ordained subdeacon in 1850. He became a member of the Society of Jesus, 24 November 1851, and was ordained priest on 22 December 1856.
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Jacob Stolterfoht
1600 - 1668 (68 years)
Jacob Stolterfoht was a German Lutheran theologian and leading pastor in Lübeck during and directly following the Thirty Years' War. Life Stolterfoht was one of the youngest of the ten children of the Lübeck pastor Johann Stolterfoht and his wife, born Margaretha Bacmeister , the only daughter of another north German theologian. In the first part of 1620 Jacob enrolled at the University of Rostock to study theology. He moved on to Wittemberg in 1621 and from there to Greifswald, where he studied between 1622 and 1623. He then returned to Rostock, where he concluded his universit...
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George Mountain
1789 - 1863 (74 years)
George Jehoshaphat Mountain was a British-Canadian Anglican bishop , the first Principal of McGill College from 1824 to 1835, and one of the founders of Bishop's University and Bishop's College School.
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