Religious Affiliation of History's 100 Most Influential People by Michael H. Hart

This list of names and their ranks are solely the work of Michael H. Hart. The columns "Religious Affiliation" and "Influence" are the work of Adherents.com. We will readily modify notes if there are any inaccuracies.
Note that many influential philosophies (such as Marxist Communism or Confucianism) are not always
classified as organized "religions" in the traditional sense, but are classified as such by sociologists because they are a primary motivational worldview for individuals, cultures or subcultures. Also, many founders never considered themselves adherents of philosophies or religions which later bore their name (e.g., Martin Luther and Lutheranism).
In the table below, where there are two religions listed, the first one is the religion the person was born into. The second was the religion or philosophy the person later joined or founded. Comments in the "Influence" column are in bold when the influence is mainly in the realm of religion and philosophy.

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/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	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	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

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