Religious Affiliation of History's 100 Most Influential People

1- Muhammad(Islam)- Prophet of Islam; conqueror of Arabia; Hart recognized that ranking Muhammad first might be controversial, but felt that, from a secular historian's perspective, this was the correct choice because Muhammad is the only man to have been both a founder of a major world religion and a major military/political leader.

2 -Isaac Newton (Anglican (rejected Trinitarianism, i.e.,
Athanasianism; believed in the Arianism
of the Primitive Church) -physicist; theory of universal gravitation; laws of motion

3 -Jesus Christ ( Judaism; Christianity )-founder of Christianity

4 -Buddha (Hinduism; Buddhism)- founder of Buddhism

5 -Confucius (Confucianism)-founder of Confucianism

6 -St. Paul (Judaism; Christianity)- proselytizer of Christianity

7 -Ts'ai Lun (Chinese traditional religion) -inventor of paper

8 -Johann Gutenberg (Catholic) -developed movable type; printed Bibles

9 -Christopher Columbus (Catholic) -explorer; led Europe to Americas

10 -Albert Einstein (Jewish) -physicist; relativity; Einsteinian physics

11 -Louis Pasteur (Catholic)-scientist; pasteurization

12 -Galileo Galilei (Catholic) -astronomer; accurately described heliocentric solar system

13 -Aristotle (Platonism / Greek philosophy) -influential Greek philosopher

14 -Euclid (Platonism / Greek philosophy) -mathematician; Euclidian geometry

15 -Moses (Judaism )-major prophet of Judaism

16 -Charles Darwin (Anglican (nominal); Unitarian) -biologist; described Darwinian evolution, which had theological impact on many religions

17 -Shih Huang Ti (Chinese traditional religion )-Chinese emperor

18 -Augustus Caesar (Roman state paganism) -ruler

19 -Nicolaus Copernicus (Catholic(priest)) -astronomer; taught heliocentricity

20 -Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (Catholic)- father of modern chemistry; philosopher; economist

21 -Constantine the Great (Roman state paganism; Christianity) -Roman emperor who completely legalized Christianity, leading to its status as state religion. Convened the First Council of Nicaea that produced the Nicene Creed, which rejected Arianism (one of two major strains of Christian thought) and established Athanasianism (Trinitarianism, the other strain) as "official doctrine."

22 -James Watt (Presbyterian (lapsed)) -developed steam engine

23 -Michael Faraday (Sandemanian) -physicist; chemist; discovery of magneto-electricity

24 -James Clerk Maxwell (Presbyterian; Anglican; Baptist) physicist; electromagnetic spectrum

25 -Martin Luther (Catholic; Lutheran) -founder of Protestantism and Lutheranism

26 -George Washington (Episcopalian) -first president of United States

27 -Karl Marx (Jewish; Lutheran;
Atheist; Marxism/Communism -founder of Marxism, Marxist Communism

28 -Orville and Wilbur Wright(United Brethren) -inventors of airplane

29 -Genghis Khan (Mongolian shamanism) -Mongol conqueror

30 -Adam Smith (Liberal Protestant) -economist; philosopher; expositor of capitalism; author: The Theory of Moral Sentiments

31 -Edward de Vere
a.k.a. William Shakespeare (Catholic; Anglican )literature; also wrote 6 volumes about philosophy and religion

32 -John Dalton(Quaker)-chemist; physicist; atomic theory; law of partial pressures (Dalton's law)

33 -Alexander the Great (Greek state paganism)-conqueror

34 -Napoleon Bonaparte (Catholic (nominal)) -French conqueror

35 -Thomas Edison (Congregationalist; agnostic)-inventor of light bulb, phonograph, etc.

36 -Antony van Leeuwenhoek (Dutch Reformed )-microscopes; studied microscopic life

37 -William T.G. Morton (??) -pioneer in anesthesiology

38 -Guglielmo Marconi (Catholic and Anglican)-inventor of radio

39 -Adolf Hitler (Nazism; born/raised in, but rejected Catholicism) -conqueror; led Axis Powers in WWII

40 -Plato(Platonism / Greek philosophy) -founder of Platonism

41 -Oliver Cromwell (Puritan (Protestant)) -British political and military leader

42 -Alexander Graham Bell (Unitarian/Universalist) -inventor of telephone *

43 -Alexander Fleming (Catholic )-penicillin; advances in bacteriology, immunology and chemotherapy

44 -John Locke (raised Puritan (Anglican);
Liberal Christian) -philosopher and liberal theologian

45 -Ludwig van Beethoven (Catholic)-composer

46 -Werner Heisenberg (Lutheran) -a founder of quantum mechanics; discovered principle of uncertainty; head of Nazi Germany's nuclear program

47 -Louis Daguerre( ??) -an inventor/pioneer of photography

48 -Simon Bolivar (Catholic (nominal); Atheist) -National hero of Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia

49 -Rene Descartes (Catholic) -Rationalist philosopher and mathematician

50 -Michelangelo (Catholic) -painter; sculptor; architect

51-Pope Urban II (Catholic)-called for First Crusade

52 -'Umar ibn al-Khattab (Islam)-Second Caliph; expanded Muslim empire

53 -Asoka (Buddhis)-king of India who converted to and spread Buddhism

54 -St. Augustine (Greek state paganism; Manicheanism; Catholic) -Early Christian theologian

55 -William Harvey (Anglican (nominal))- described the circulation of blood; wrote Essays on the Generation of Animals, the basis for modern embryology

56 -Ernest Rutherford (??)-physicist; pioneer of subatomic physics

57 -John Calvin (Protestant; Calvinism)- Protestant reformer; founder of Calvinism

58 -Gregor Mendel (Catholic (Augustinian monk) )-Mendelian genetics

59 -Max Planck (Protestant)-physicist; thermodynamics

60 -Joseph Lister (Quaker )-principal discoverer of antiseptics which greatly reduced surgical mortality

61 -Nikolaus August Otto(??)- built first four-stroke internal combustion engine

62 -Francisco Pizarro (Catholic) -Spanish conqueror in South America; defeated Incas

63 -Hernando Cortes (Catholic )-conquered Mexico for Spain; through war and introduction of new diseases he largely destroyed Aztec civilization

64 -Thomas Jefferson (Episcopalian; Deist)- 3rd president of United States

65 -Queen Isabella I (Catholic )-Spanish ruler

66 -Joseph Stalin (Russian Orthodox; Atheist; Marxism)-revolutionary and ruler of USSR

67 -Julius Caesar (Roman state paganism) -Roman emperor

68 -William the Conqueror (Catholic) -laid foundation of modern England

69 -Sigmund Freud (Jewish; atheist; Freudian psychology/psychoanalysis)

- founded Freudian school of psychology/psychoanalysis (i.e., the "religion of Freudianism")

70 -Edward Jenner (Anglican) -discoverer of the vaccination for smallpox

71 -Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen (??) -discovered X-rays

72 -Johann Sebastian Bach (Lutheran; Catholic) composer
73 -Lao Tzu (Taoism) founder of Taoism
74 -Voltaire (raised in Jansenism;
later Deist) -writer and philosopher; wrote Candide

75 -Johannes Kepler (Lutheran) -astronomer; planetary motions

76 -Enrico Fermi (Catholic) -initiated the atomic age; father of atom bomb

77 -Leonhard Euler (Calvinist)-physicist; mathematician; differential and integral calculus and algebra

78 Jean-Jacques Rousseau (born Protestant;
converted as a teen to Catholic;)-later Deist French deistic philosopher and author

79 -Nicoli Machiavelli (Catholic) -wrote The Prince (influential political treatise)

80 -Thomas Malthus (Anglican (cleric)) -economist; wrote Essay on the Principle of Population

81 -John F. Kennedy (Catholic)- U.S. President who led first successful effort by humans to travel to another "planet"

82-Gregory Pincus (Jewish) -endocrinologist; developed birth-control pill

83 -Mani (Manicheanism) -founder of Manicheanism, once a world religion which rivaled Christianity in strength

84 -Lenin(Russian Orthodox;
Atheist; Marxism/Communism) Russian ruler

85 -Sui Wen Ti (Chinese traditional religion) -unified China

86 -Vasco da Gama(Catholic)-navigator; discovered route from Europe to India around Cape Hood

87 -Cyrus the Great (Zoroastrianism) -founder of Persian empire

88 -Peter the Great (Russian Orthodox) -forged Russia into a great European nation

89 -Mao Zedong (Atheist; Communism; Maoism) -founder of Maoism, Chinese form of Communism

90-Francis Bacon (Anglican )-philosopher; delineated inductive scientific method

91 -Henry Ford (Protestant)-developed automobile; achievement in manufacturing and assembly

92-Mencius(Confucianism) -philosopher; founder of a school of Confucianism

93 -Zoroaster(Zoroastrianism)-founder of Zoroastrianism

94 -Queen Elizabeth I (Anglican)-British monarch; restored Church of England to power after Queen Mary

95 -Mikhail Gorbachev(Russian Orthodox) -Russian premier who helped end Communism in USSR

96-Menes (Egyptian paganism )-unified Upper and Lower Egypt'

97 -Charlemagne (Catholic) -Holy Roman Empire created with his baptism in 800 AD

98 -Homer (Greek paganism)-epic poet

99 -Justinian I(Catholic)-Roman emperor; reconquered Mediterranean empire; accelerated Catholic-Monophysite schism

100-Mahavira(Hinduism; Jainism)-founder of Jainism