Rank

Name

Religious Affiliation

Influence

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. More

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 into
but rejected Catholicism; allegedly a
proponent of Germanic Neo-Paganism

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

Buddhism

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

(0)

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Series:

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