Paul, New Testament

I was given a book a number of years ago with an unusual premise. The author's purpose was to rank the 100 most influential people in human history. This means, naturally, the use of many criteria, most of them purely subjective. How does one compare, for instance, Genghis Khan to J. S. Bach? It's an interesting book, but it settles very little from a factual basis.
For what it's worth, the Apostle Paul is ranked by the author as the 6th most important person of history, slightly ahead of Columbus, Einstein and Karl Marx.
Paul is ranked so highly because of the success which eventually came from his life's work - the taking of the message of Christianity, at first thought to be simply a branch of Judaism, into some far parts of what then constituted the "known world", where it was recognized as something growing out of, but then transcending the worship of Yahweh, claiming that the Messiah had, indeed, come to earth, and had established his Church upon the earth.
While always a person of great devotion, Paul was not always a devoted Christian. In fact, he played a role in the persecution of these people by the Jewish authorities of his day. The victims were themselves almost all ethnic Jews, but Paul, then known as Saul, saw nothing wrong in trying to keep out new ideas that he could not confirm by revelation, and did not oppose violence against these Jesus followers trying to claim authority for themselves.
This changed as Saul traveled to Damascus on a mission of persecution. An angel appeared to him and told him that his actions were flatly wrong, and that he must reverse them in order to be considered a true servant of God. All this simply overpowered Saul's senses, and he fell to earth, unconscious and speechless.
It took awhile for Paul, as he was now called, to make the change the angel had spoken about, but change he did. It soon became evident that his mission was to go to the great cities of the then known world to preach this new Gospel. He could no longer function as a pharisee, and so he took up the trade of tent making as a way to meet his expenses. Most Christian Bibles devote a page in the Gazeteer to the travels of Paul through several journeys.
The leaders of the infant church were not at first convinced that this message is intended for non-Jews, but then Peter had a dream which lead him to conclude that times had changed, and that ALL people could now be considered as possible new Christians.
Paul becomes a member of the Twelve Apostles and also devotes time to correspond with the congregations he had helped to establish, correcting their misconceptions and encouraging them to persevere in the face of adversity. His epistles take up more pages than any of the Gospels, and form the theology of many Christian denominations today.
We do not have a record of the end of Paul's life, but by tradition it took place in Rome and was probably violent, as the deaths of other apostles had been.
Paul deserves our admiration not just for his works over a long stretch of time, but for resisting any temptation to do or say anything in his own name, always portraying himself as just a man in the service of God and Jesus Christ.