List of German inventors and discoverers
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---- __NOTOC__ This is a list of German inventors and discoverers. The following list comprises people from Germany or German-speaking Europe, and also people of predominantly German heritage, in alphabetical order of the surname. For the list containing items and ideas invented and/or discovered by Germans, see
list of German inventions and discoveries German inventions and discoveries are ideas, objects, processes or techniques invented, innovated or discovered, partially or entirely, in Germany or abroad by a person from Germany (that is, someone born in Germany – including to non-German ...
.


A

*
Ernst Abbe Ernst Karl Abbe HonFRMS (23 January 1840 – 14 January 1905) was a German physicist, optical scientist, entrepreneur, and social reformer. Together with Otto Schott and Carl Zeiss, he developed numerous optical instruments. He was also a c ...
: Invented the first
refractometer A refractometer is a laboratory or field device for the measurement of an index of refraction ( refractometry). The index of refraction is calculated from the observed refraction angle using Snell's law. For mixtures, the index of refraction the ...
, and many other devices. Donated his shares in the company Carl Zeiss to form
Carl-Zeiss-Stiftung The Carl-Zeiss- Stiftung (Carl Zeiss Foundation), legally located in Heidenheim an der Brenz and Jena, Germany, and with its administrative Headquarter in Stuttgart, is the sole shareholder of the two companies Carl Zeiss AG and Schott AG. It w ...
, still in existence today. *
Franz Carl Achard Franz Karl Achard (28 April 1753 – 20 April 1821) was a German (Prussian) chemist, geoscientist, physicist, and biologist. His principal discovery was the production of sugar from sugar beets. Life and work Achard was born in Berlin, the so ...
: Developed a process to produce sugar from sugar beet. Built the first factory for the process in 1802. *
Robert Adler Robert Adler (December 4, 1913 – February 15, 2007) was an Austrian-American inventor who held numerous patents. He worked for Zenith Electronics, retiring as the company's Vice President and Director of Research. His work included developing ...
: Invented a better television remote control. *
Konrad Adenauer Konrad Hermann Joseph Adenauer (; 5 January 1876 – 19 April 1967) was a Germany, German statesman who served as the first Chancellor of Germany, chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany from 1949 to 1963. From 1946 to 1966, he was the fir ...
: Invented soya sausage (1916; "Kölner Wurst") and, together with Jean and Josef Oebel, oarsewholemeal bread (1917; Kölner Brot). *
Georgius Agricola Georgius Agricola (; born Georg Pawer or Georg Bauer; 24 March 1494 – 21 November 1555) was a German Humanist scholar, mineralogist and metallurgist. Born in the small town of Glauchau, in the Electorate of Saxony of the Holy Roman Empir ...
: Named "the father of mineralogy". * Wilhelm Albert: Invented the
wire rope Steel wire rope (right hand lang lay) Wire rope is several strands of metal wire twisted into a helix forming a composite ''rope'', in a pattern known as ''laid rope''. Larger diameter wire rope consists of multiple strands of such laid rope in a ...
1834. *
Kurt Alder Kurt Alder (; 10 July 1902 – 20 June 1958) was a German chemist and Nobel laureate. Biography Alder was born in the industrial area of Königshütte, Silesia (modern day Chorzów, Upper Silesia, Poland), where he received his early schoo ...
: Discovery of the
Diels–Alder reaction In organic chemistry, the Diels–Alder reaction is a chemical reaction between a conjugated diene and a substituted alkene, commonly termed the dienophile, to form a substituted cyclohexene derivative. It is the prototypical example of a peric ...
, Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1950. *
Richard Altmann Richard Altmann (12 March 1852 – 8 December 1900) was a German pathologist and histologist from Deutsch Eylau in the Province of Prussia. Altmann studied medicine in Greifswald, Königsberg, Marburg, and Giessen, obtaining a doctorate at t ...
: Discovery of the
Mitochondrion A mitochondrion (; ) is an organelle found in the cells of most Eukaryotes, such as animals, plants and fungi. Mitochondria have a double membrane structure and use aerobic respiration to generate adenosine triphosphate (ATP), which is used ...
*
Alois Alzheimer Alois Alzheimer ( , , ; 14 June 1864 – 19 December 1915) was a German psychiatrist and neuropathologist and a colleague of Emil Kraepelin. Alzheimer is credited with identifying the first published case of "presenile dementia", which Kraepel ...
: Psychiatrist who discovered Alzheimer´s disease, a degeneration of the brain in old age. *
Momme Andresen Momme Andresen (; 17 October 1857 - 12 January 1951) was a Danish-German industrial research chemist. His main area of work was to formulate better developers and fixers for black-and-white photographs. Biography Andresen attended a Volksschul ...
(1857-1951): industrial research chemist who made inventions relating to photography *
Ottomar Anschütz Ottomar Anschütz (16 May 1846, in Lissa – 30 May 1907, in Berlin) was a German inventor, photographer, and chronophotographer Career Anschütz studied photography between 1864 and 1868 under the well-known photographers Ferdinand Beyrich ( ...
: in 1883 he patented a camera with an internal roller blind shutter mechanism, just in front of the photographic plate. Thus the focal-plane shutter in modern recognizable form was born. *
Hermann Anschütz-Kaempfe Hermann Franz Joseph Hubertus Maria Anschütz-Kaempfe (3 October 1872 – 6 May 1931) was a German art historian and inventor. He was born in Zweibrücken and died in Munich. In his quest to navigate to the North Pole by submarine, he becam ...
: Invented the
gyrocompass A gyrocompass is a type of non-magnetic compass which is based on a fast-spinning disc and the rotation of the Earth (or another planetary body if used elsewhere in the universe) to find geographical direction automatically. The use of a gyroc ...
in 1907. *
Manfred von Ardenne Manfred von Ardenne (20 January 1907 – 26 May 1997) was a German researcher and applied physicist and inventor. He took out approximately 600 patents in fields including electron microscopy, medical technology, nuclear technology, plasma physics ...
: Self-taught researcher, applied physicist, and inventor. 600 patents in fields including television and radio, electron microscopy, medical technology, nuclear technology, and plasma physics. *
Friedrich Wilhelm August Argelander Friedrich Wilhelm August Argelander (22 March 1799 – 17 February 1875) was a German astronomer. He is known for his determinations of stellar brightnesses, positions, and distances. Life and work Argelander was born in Memel in the Kingd ...
: cataloged all stars brighter than approximately magnitude 9.5 and north of -2 degrees in the
Bonner Durchmusterung In astronomy, Durchmusterung or Bonner Durchmusterung (BD) is an astrometric star catalogue of the whole sky, compiled by the Bonn Observatory in Germany from 1859 to 1903. The name comes from ('run-through examination'), a German word used for ...
, the first large-scale modern star catalog. *
Leo Arons Martin Leo Arons (15 February 1860 – 10 October 1919) was a German physicist and social democratic politician. He was the namesake of the ''Lex Arons'', a law which disallowed members of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (german: Sozialdemo ...
:
Mercury-vapor lamp A mercury-vapor lamp is a gas-discharge lamp that uses an electric arc through vaporized mercury to produce light. The arc discharge is generally confined to a small fused quartz arc tube mounted within a larger soda lime or borosilicate gl ...
together with
Peter Cooper Hewitt Peter Cooper Hewitt (May 5, 1861 – August 25, 1921) was an American electrical engineer and inventor, who invented the first mercury-vapor lamp in 1901. Hewitt was issued on September 17, 1901. In 1903, Hewitt created an improved version t ...
. *
Leopold Auerbach Leopold Auerbach (27 April 1828 – 30 September 1897) was a German anatomist and neuropathologist born in Breslau. Education and career Auerbach studied medicine at the Universities of Breslau, Berlin and the Leipzig. He became a physician in ...
: Discovery of Plexus myentericus Auerbachi, or Auerbach's plexus. *
Max Abraham Max Abraham (; 26 March 1875 – 16 November 1922) was a German physicist known for his work on electromagnetism and his opposition to the theory of relativity. Biography Abraham was born in Danzig, Imperial Germany (now Gdańsk in Poland) t ...
: Physicist. Worked as Max Planck's assistant for three years. Developed theories on electrons.


B

*
Walter Baade Wilhelm Heinrich Walter Baade (March 24, 1893 – June 25, 1960) was a German astronomer who worked in the United States from 1931 to 1959. Biography The son of a teacher, Baade finished school in 1912. He then studied maths, physics and astr ...
: astronomer. With Fritz Zwicky, he identified supernovae as a new category of astronomical objects *
Karl Ernst von Baer Karl Ernst Ritter von Baer Edler von Huthorn ( – ) was a Baltic German scientist and explorer. Baer was a naturalist, biologist, geologist, meteorologist, geographer, and is considered a, or the, founding father of embryology. He was ...
: discovered mammal ovum. *
Ralph Baer Ralph Henry Baer (born Rudolf Heinrich Baer; March 8, 1922 – December 6, 2014) was a German-American inventor, game developer, and engineer. Baer's family fled Germany just before World War II and Baer served the American war effort, gain ...
: Inventor of the first home video game console. *
Adolf von Baeyer Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Adolf von Baeyer (; 31 October 1835 – 20 August 1917) was a German chemist who synthesised indigo and developed a nomenclature for cyclic compounds (that was subsequently extended and adopted as part of the IUPAC org ...
: Chemist. Synthesized
indigo Indigo is a deep color close to the color wheel blue (a primary color in the RGB color space), as well as to some variants of ultramarine, based on the ancient dye of the same name. The word "indigo" comes from the Latin word ''indicum'', m ...
, discovered the phthalein dyes, and investigated polyacetylenes, oxonium salts, nitroso compounds (1869) and uric acid derivatives (1860 and onwards) including the discovery of barbituric acid (1864).
Nobel laureate The Nobel Prizes ( sv, Nobelpriset, no, Nobelprisen) are awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Swedish Academy, the Karolinska Institutet, and the Norwegian Nobel Committee to individuals and organizations who make out ...
1905. *
Otto Bayer Otto Bayer (4 November 1902 – 1 August 1982) was a German industrial chemist at IG Farben who was head of the research group that in 1937 discovered the polyaddition for the synthesis of polyurethanes out of poly-isocyanate and polyol. Bay ...
: Chemist. Invented polyurethane. *
Albert Ballin Albert Ballin (15 August 1857 – 9 November 1918) was a German shipping magnate. He was the general director of the Hamburg-Amerikanische Packetfahrt-Actien-Gesellschaft (HAPAG) or Hamburg-America Line, which for a time was the world's largest s ...
: Father of modern
cruise ship Cruise ships are large passenger ships used mainly for vacationing. Unlike ocean liners, which are used for transport, cruise ships typically embark on round-trip voyages to various ports-of-call, where passengers may go on tours known as "s ...
travel *
Heinrich Band Heinrich Band (1821 – 1860) was the inventor of the bandoneón; this 'hand-organ-like' instrument is a reed instrument in the concertina A concertina is a free-reed musical instrument, like the various accordions and the harmonica. It c ...
: Developed a musical instrument and called it
bandoneón The bandoneon (or bandonion, es, bandoneón) is a type of concertina particularly popular in Argentina and Uruguay. It is a typical instrument in most tango ensembles. As with other members of the concertina family, the bandoneon is held ...
in 1846. It is still used in most tango orchestras. *
Heinrich Barkhausen Heinrich Georg Barkhausen (2 December 1881 – 20 February 1956), born in Bremen, was a German physicist. Growing up in a patrician Bremen family, he showed interest in natural sciences from an early age. He studied at the Technical Univer ...
: Discovered what is now called the
Barkhausen effect The Barkhausen effect is a name given to the noise in the magnetic output of a ferromagnet when the magnetizing force applied to it is changed. Discovered by German physicist Heinrich Barkhausen in 1919, it is caused by rapid changes of size o ...
, to describe the phenomenon, which is caused by rapid changes of size of magnetic domains in 1919, and
Barkhausen stability criterion In electronics, the Barkhausen stability criterion is a mathematical condition to determine when a linear electronic circuit will oscillate. It was put forth in 1921 by German physicist Heinrich Georg Barkhausen (1881–1956). It is widely u ...
. *
Oskar Barnack Oskar Barnack (Nuthe-Urstromtal, Brandenburg, 1 November 1879 – Bad Nauheim, Hesse, 16 January 1936) was a German inventor and photographer who built, in 1913, what would later become the first commercially successful 35mm still-camera, sub ...
: The father of the first mass marketed 35mm camera and Leica. *
Heinrich Anton de Bary Heinrich Anton de Bary (26 January 183119 January 1888) was a German surgeon, botanist, microbiologist, and mycologist (fungal systematics and physiology). He is considered a founding father of plant pathology (phytopathology) as well as the fou ...
: Father of
Phytopathology Plant pathology (also phytopathology) is the scientific study of diseases in plants caused by pathogens (infectious organisms) and environmental conditions (physiological factors). Organisms that cause infectious disease include fungi, oomyc ...
, the science of plant diseases and modern
Mycology Mycology is the branch of biology concerned with the study of fungi, including their genetic and biochemical properties, their taxonomy and their use to humans, including as a source for tinder, traditional medicine, food, and entheogens, as ...
. Coined the word
symbiosis Symbiosis (from Greek , , "living together", from , , "together", and , bíōsis, "living") is any type of a close and long-term biological interaction between two different biological organisms, be it mutualistic, commensalistic, or parasit ...
in 1879. *
Karl Adolph von Basedow Carl Adolph von Basedow (28 March 1799 – 11 April 1854) was a Germans, German physician most famous for reporting the symptoms of what could later be dubbed Graves-Basedow disease, now technically known as exophthalmic goiter. Biography Basedow ...
: Discovery and description of Graves-Basedow disease *
Andreas Friedrich Bauer Andreas Friedrich Bauer (18 August 1783 – 27 December 1860) was a Germans, German engineer who developed the first functional steam-powered printing press with his colleague Friedrich Koenig, who had invented the technology and sold it to ''The ...
: first functional steam-powered
printing press A printing press is a mechanical device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a printing, print medium (such as paper or cloth), thereby transferring the ink. It marked a dramatic improvement on earlier printing methods in wh ...
with his colleague
Friedrich Koenig Friedrich Gottlob Koenig (17 April 1774 – 17 January 1833) was a German inventor best known for his high-speed steam-powered printing press, which he built together with watchmaker Andreas Friedrich Bauer. This new style of printing press ...
*
Wilhelm Bauer Wilhelm Bauer (23 December 1822 – 20 June 1875) was a German inventor and engineer who built several hand-powered submarines. Biography Wilhelm Bauer was born in Dillingen in the Kingdom of Bavaria. His father was a sergeant of a Bavarian ...
: Inventor and engineer, who built several hand-powered submarines. *
Eugen Baumann Eugen Baumann (12 December 1846 – 3 November 1896) was a German chemist. He was one of the first people to create polyvinyl chloride (PVC), and, together with Carl Schotten, he discovered the Schotten-Baumann reaction. Life Baumann was born i ...
: He was one of the first people to create polyvinyl chloride (PVC), and, together with Carl Schotten, he discovered the Schotten-Baumann reaction. * Carl Baunscheidt: Inventor of the ''Lebenswecker'' ("life awakener") or "artificial leech". *
Hans Beck Hans Beck (6 May 1929, Greiz – 30 January 2009, Markdorf) was the German inventor of Playmobil toys. He is often described as "The Father of Playmobil". He began to make toys at an early age and trained as a cabinet maker, before being recruit ...
: Inventor of the toy
Playmobil Playmobil () is a German line of toys produced by the Brandstätter Group (Geobra Brandstätter GmbH & Co KG), headquartered in Zirndorf, Germany. The signature Playmobil toy is a tall (1:24 scale) human figure with a smiling face. A wide ran ...
. *
Georg Bednorz Johannes Georg Bednorz (; born 16 May 1950) is a German physicist who, together with K. Alex Müller, discovered high-temperature superconductivity in ceramics, for which they shared the 1987 Nobel Prize in Physics. Life and work Bednorz was bor ...
: Physicist, discovered
high-temperature superconductivity High-temperature superconductors (abbreviated high-c or HTS) are defined as materials that behave as superconductors at temperatures above , the boiling point of liquid nitrogen. The adjective "high temperature" is only in respect to previ ...
in
ceramic A ceramic is any of the various hard, brittle, heat-resistant and corrosion-resistant materials made by shaping and then firing an inorganic, nonmetallic material, such as clay, at a high temperature. Common examples are earthenware, porcelain ...
s, shared the 1987 Nobel Prize in Physics. *
Martin Behaim Martin Behaim (6 October 1459 – 29 July 1507), also known as and by various forms of , was a German textile merchant and cartographer. He served John II of Portugal as an adviser in matters of navigation and participated in a voyage to W ...
: Inventor of the first globe of the world (
Erdapfel __NOTOC__ The (; ) is a terrestrial globe produced by Martin Behaim from 1490–1492. The Erdapfel is the oldest surviving terrestrial globe. It is constructed of a laminated linen ball in two halves, reinforced with wood and overlaid with a ma ...
) between 1491 and 1493. * Alexander Behm: Inventor of
echo sounding Echo sounding or depth sounding is the use of sonar for ranging, normally to determine the depth of water (bathymetry). It involves transmitting acoustic waves into water and recording the time interval between emission and return of a pulse; ...
. The patent was granted in 1913. *
Emil von Behring Emil von Behring (; Emil Adolf von Behring), born Emil Adolf Behring (15 March 1854 – 31 March 1917), was a German physiologist who received the 1901 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, the first one awarded in that field, for his discovery ...
: Discovery of
diphtheria antitoxin Diphtheria antitoxin (DAT) is a medication made up of antibodies used in the treatment of diphtheria. It is no longer recommended for prevention of diphtheria. It is given by injection into a vein or muscle. Side effects are common. They inclu ...
*
Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen Fabian Gottlieb Thaddeus von Bellingshausen (russian: Фадде́й Фадде́евич Беллинсга́узен, translit=Faddéy Faddéevich Bellinsgáuzen; – ) was a Russian naval officer, cartographer and explorer, who ultimatel ...
: Navigator and explorer. Discovered the land mass of
Antarctica Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean, it contains the geographic South Pole. Antarctica is the fifth-largest contine ...
on January 28, 1820. *
Friedrich Bessel Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel (; 22 July 1784 – 17 March 1846) was a German astronomer, mathematician, physicist, and geodesist. He was the first astronomer who determined reliable values for the distance from the sun to another star by the method ...
: astronomer; he is credited with being the first to use parallax in calculating the distance to a star. *
Hans Bethe Hans Albrecht Bethe (; July 2, 1906 – March 6, 2005) was a German-American theoretical physicist who made major contributions to nuclear physics, astrophysics, quantum electrodynamics, and solid-state physics, and who won the 1967 Nobel ...
: Nuclear physicist and Nobel laureate in physics 1967. During World War II, he was head of the Theoretical Division at the secret Los Alamos laboratory which developed the first
atomic bombs A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions (thermonuclear bomb), producing a nuclear explosion. Both bomb ...
. *
Emil Adolf von Behring Emil von Behring (; Emil Adolf von Behring), born Emil Adolf Behring (15 March 1854 – 31 March 1917), was a German physiologist who received the 1901 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, the first one awarded in that field, for his discovery ...
: physiologist. Discovered the diphtheria antitoxin. It was the world's first cure for a disease (1891). He was awarded history's first Nobel Prize in Physiology of Medicine in 1901. *
Melitta Bentz Amalie Auguste Melitta Bentz (31 January 1873 – 29 June 1950), born Amalie Auguste Melitta Liebscher, was a German entrepreneur who invented the paper coffee filter brewing system in 1908. She founded the namesake company Melitta, which still ...
: entrepreneur. She is an inventor of the coffee filter, 1908. *
Bertha Benz Bertha Benz (; ; 3 May 1849 – 5 May 1944) was a German automotive pioneer and inventor. She was the business partner and wife of automobile inventor Carl Benz. On 5 August 1888, she was the first person to drive an internal-combustion-engined a ...
: invented
brake lining Brake linings are the consumable surfaces in brake systems, such as drum brakes and disc brakes used in transport vehicles. History Brake linings were invented by Bertha Benz (the wife of Karl Benz, who invented the first patented automobile) du ...
. *
Karl Benz Carl Friedrich Benz (; 25 November 1844 – 4 April 1929), sometimes also Karl Friedrich Benz, was a German engine designer and automotive engineer. His Benz Patent Motorcar from 1885 is considered the first practical modern automobile and fir ...
: industrialist. Father and inventor of the gasoline-powered automobile, 1885, and pioneering founder of automobile manufacturing. *
Albrecht Berblinger Albrecht Ludwig Berblinger (24 June 1770 – 28 January 1829), also known as the Tailor of Ulm, is famous for having constructed a working flying machine, presumably a hang glider. Early life Berblinger was the seventh child of a poor fa ...
: engineer. Inventor of the spring prosthesis and hang-glider (1811).Albrecht Ludwig Berblinger (1770-1829), known as the "Flying Tailor of Ulm", started with flight experiments in Ulm, Germany, in the early 19th century. He gained experience in downhill gliding with a maneuverable airworthy semi-rigid hang-glider and then attempted to cross the Danube River at Ulm's Eagle's Bastion on 31 May 1811. The tricky local winds caused him to crash and he was rescued by fishermen, making him the first survivor of a water immersion accident of a heavier-than-air manned "flight machine". Though he failed in his attempt to be the first man to fly, Berblinger can be regarded as one of the significant aviation pioneers who applied the "heavier than air" principle and paved the way for the more effective glide-flights of Otto Lilienthal (1891) and the Wright Brothers (1902). Less known are Berblinger's significant contributions to the construction of artificial limbs for medical use, as well as the spring-application in aviation. His invention of a special mechanical joint was also used for the juncture of the wings of his "flying machine". Because of his worthwhile contributions to medicine and flight, in 1993 the German Academy of Aviation Medicine named an annual award for young scientists in the field of aerospace medicine in his honor. *
Hans Berger Hans Berger (21 May 1873 – 1 June 1941) was a German psychiatrist. He is best known as the inventor of electroencephalography (EEG) in 1924, which is a method used for recording the electrical activity of the brain, commonly described in terms ...
: a German neurologist, best known as the inventor of
electroencephalography Electroencephalography (EEG) is a method to record an electrogram of the spontaneous electrical activity of the brain. The biosignals detected by EEG have been shown to represent the postsynaptic potentials of pyramidal neurons in the neocortex ...
(EEG) (the recording of "brain waves") in 1924, coining the name, and the discoverer of the
alpha wave Alpha waves, or the alpha rhythm, are neural oscillations in the frequency range of 8–12 Hz likely originating from the synchronous and coherent (in phase or constructive) electrical activity of thalamic pacemaker cells in humans. Historica ...
rhythm known as "Berger's wave" *
Emil Berliner Emile Berliner (May 20, 1851 – August 3, 1929) originally Emil Berliner, was a German-American inventor. He is best known for inventing the lateral-cut flat disc record (called a "gramophone record" in British and American English) used with a ...
: He is best known for developing the microphone and disc recording gramophone. * Albert Betz: physicist.
Betz's law Betz's law indicates the maximum power that can be extracted from the wind, independent of the design of a wind turbine in open flow. It was published in 1919 by the German physicist Albert Betz. The law is derived from the principles of conserva ...
, 1913 *
Heinz Billing Heinz Billing (7 April 1914 – 4 January 2017) was a German physicist and computer scientist, widely considered a pioneer in the construction of computer systems and computer data storage, who built a prototype laser interferometric gravitatio ...
: Computer scientist. He invented the magnetic
drum memory Drum memory was a magnetic data storage device invented by Gustav Tauschek in 1932 in Austria. Drums were widely used in the 1950s and into the 1960s as computer memory. For many early computers, drum memory formed the main working memory ...
and built prototype laser interferometric gravitational wave detector in Garching, Munich. *
Gerd Binnig Gerd Binnig (; born 20 July 1947) is a German physicist. He is most famous for having won the Nobel Prize in Physics jointly with Heinrich Rohrer in 1986 for the invention of the scanning tunneling microscope. Early life and education Binnig wa ...
: Physicist. Design of the scanning tunneling microscope (STM) with
Heinrich Rohrer Heinrich Rohrer (6 June 1933 – 16 May 2013) was a Swiss physicist who shared half of the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physics with Gerd Binnig for the design of the scanning tunneling microscope (STM). The other half of the Prize was awarded to Ernst R ...
. Nobel laureate 1986. *
Otto von Bismarck Otto, Prince of Bismarck, Count of Bismarck-Schönhausen, Duke of Lauenburg (, ; 1 April 1815 – 30 July 1898), born Otto Eduard Leopold von Bismarck, was a conservative German statesman and diplomat. From his origins in the upper class of J ...
: Under his reign, the
German Empire The German Empire (),Herbert Tuttle wrote in September 1881 that the term "Reich" does not literally connote an empire as has been commonly assumed by English-speaking people. The term literally denotes an empire – particularly a hereditary ...
(1871–1918) became the first modern
welfare state A welfare state is a form of government in which the state (or a well-established network of social institutions) protects and promotes the economic and social well-being of its citizens, based upon the principles of equal opportunity, equitabl ...
in the world, when he e.g. innovatively implemented the following:
health insurance Health insurance or medical insurance (also known as medical aid in South Africa) is a type of insurance that covers the whole or a part of the risk of a person incurring medical expenses. As with other types of insurance, risk is shared among ma ...
(1883),
accident insurance Accident insurance is a type of insurance where the policy holder is paid directly in the event of an accident resulting in injury of the insured. The insured can spend the benefit payment however they choose. Accident insurance is complementary to ...
(1884), pension insurance (1889). *
Ludwig Blattner Ludwig Blattner (1881 – 30 October 1935) was a German-born inventor, film producer, director and studio owner in the United Kingdom, and developer of one of the earliest magnetic sound recording devices. Career Ludwig Blattner, also kno ...
: developed the Blattnerphone, the first magnetic
tape recorder An audio tape recorder, also known as a tape deck, tape player or tape machine or simply a tape recorder, is a sound recording and reproduction device that records and plays back sounds usually using magnetic tape for storage. In its present- ...
(using steel tape) whilst working in Britain in the late 1920s. *
Günter Blobel Günter Blobel (; May 21, 1936 – February 18, 2018) was a Silesian German and American biologist and 1999 Nobel Prize laureate in Physiology for the discovery that proteins have intrinsic signals that govern their transport and localization in ...
: biologist, discovered
signal peptide A signal peptide (sometimes referred to as signal sequence, targeting signal, localization signal, localization sequence, transit peptide, leader sequence or leader peptide) is a short peptide (usually 16-30 amino acids long) present at the N-ter ...
s. Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1999. *
Walter Bock Walter Bock (20 January 1895 – 25 October 1948)Death record Nr. 3271/Köln I for Ludwig Walter Robert Bock of Oct. 26, 1948, Landesarchiv NRW, Duisburg was a German chemist who developed styrene-butadiene copolymer by emulsion polymerization ...
: chemist,
Styrene-butadiene Styrene-butadiene or styrene-butadiene rubber (SBR) describe families of synthetic rubbers derived from styrene and butadiene (the version developed by Goodyear is called Neolite). These materials have good abrasion resistance and good aging st ...
*
Max Bockmühl Max Bockmühl (2 September 1882 – 5 January 1949) was a German inventor and chemist. Life Bockmühl studied chemistry and pharmacy. He worked as chemist in Germany. Together with Gustav Ehrhart working for I.G. Farbenindustrie AG at the ...
: chemist, he developed
Methadone Methadone, sold under the brand names Dolophine and Methadose among others, is a synthetic opioid agonist used for chronic pain and also for opioid dependence. It is used to treat chronic pain, and it is also used to treat addiction to heroin ...
together with German
Gustav Ehrhart Gustav Ehrhart (21 December 1894 – 11 December 1971) was a German chemist. He synthesized the first fully synthetic opioid analgesic, methadone, together with Max Bockmühl. Education and professional positions Ehrhart studied chemistry at ...
in 1937 in Germany, working for I.G. Farbenindustrie AG at the Farbwerke Hoechst *
Johann Elert Bode Johann Elert Bode (; 19 January 1747 – 23 November 1826) was a German astronomer known for his reformulation and popularisation of the Titius–Bode law. Bode determined the orbit of Uranus and suggested the planet's name. Life and career Bo ...
: astronomer, Discovered the Titus-Bode Law * Ludwig Bölkow: Aeronautical pioneer. Was instrumental in the development of the
Me 262 The Messerschmitt Me 262, nicknamed ''Schwalbe'' (German: "Swallow") in fighter versions, or ''Sturmvogel'' (German: "Storm Bird") in fighter-bomber versions, is a fighter aircraft and fighter-bomber that was designed and produced by the German ...
, developed a new
rotorhead In helicopters the rotorhead is the part of the rotor assembly that joins the blades to the shaft, cyclic and collective mechanisms. It is sometimes referred to as the rotor "hub". The rotorhead is where the lift force from the rotor blades act. T ...
concept for helicopters. *
Max Born Max Born (; 11 December 1882 – 5 January 1970) was a German physicist and mathematician who was instrumental in the development of quantum mechanics. He also made contributions to solid-state physics and optics and supervised the work of a n ...
: Physicist and mathematician. Groundbreaking work in quantum mechanics. Nobel laureate 1954 with Walther Bothe. His Ph.D. student Delbrück, and six of his assistants (Fermi, Heisenberg, Goeppert-Mayer, Herzberg, Pauli, Wigner) went on to win Nobel Prizes. His Ph.D. student
J. Robert Oppenheimer J. Robert Oppenheimer (; April 22, 1904 – February 18, 1967) was an American theoretical physicist. A professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, Oppenheimer was the wartime head of the Los Alamos Laboratory and is oft ...
led the project to develop the atomic bomb. *
Manfred Börner Manfred Börner (16 March 1929 in Rochlitz – 15 January 1996) was a German physicist he holds nearly 60 patents and is best known for his contributions to the development of fibre optic technology. He developed the first working optical fi ...
: Physicist. Developed the first working fiber-optical data transmission system in 1965. Received a patent for an "electro-optical transmission system utilizing lasers". *
Carl Bosch Carl Bosch (; 27 August 1874 – 26 April 1940) was a German chemist and engineer and Nobel Laureate in Chemistry. He was a pioneer in the field of high-pressure industrial chemistry and founder of IG Farben, at one point the world's largest ...
: Chemist and Nobel laureate, discovered the processes of industrial
high-pressure chemistry High-pressure chemistry is concerned with those chemical processes that are carried out under high pressure – pressures in the thousands of bars (100 k Pa) or higher. High-pressure processes are generally faster and have a higher conversion effi ...
. *
Robert Bosch Robert Bosch (23 September 1861 – 12 March 1942) was a German industrialist, engineer and inventor, founder of Robert Bosch GmbH. Biography Bosch was born in Albeck, a village to the northeast of Ulm in southern Germany as the eleventh of ...
: industrialist, engineer. He invented, engineered and launched various innovations for the motor vehicle. *
Walther Bothe Walther Wilhelm Georg Bothe (; 8 January 1891 – 8 February 1957) was a German nuclear physicist, who shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1954 with Max Born. In 1913, he joined the newly created Laboratory for Radioactivity at the Reich Physi ...
: Nuclear physicist, who shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1954 with Max Born. *
Johann Friedrich Böttger Johann Friedrich Böttger (also Böttcher or Böttiger; 4 February 1682 – 13 March 1719) was a German alchemist. Böttger was born in Schleiz and died in Dresden. He is normally credited with being the first European to discover the secret of th ...
: alchemist. He was generally acknowledged as the inventor of European porcelain although more recent sources ascribe this to Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus. Böttger is still credited with developing the manufacture of porcelain in Europe. *
Theodor Boveri Theodor Heinrich Boveri (12 October 1862 – 15 October 1915) was a German zoologist, comparative anatomist and co-founder of modern cytology. He was notable for the first hypothesis regarding cellular processes that cause cancer, and for descr ...
: biologist, described
Centrosome In cell biology, the centrosome (Latin centrum 'center' + Greek sōma 'body') (archaically cytocentre) is an organelle that serves as the main microtubule organizing center (MTOC) of the animal cell, as well as a regulator of cell-cycle prog ...
. *
Karlheinz Brandenburg Karlheinz Brandenburg (born 20 June 1954) is a German electrical engineer and mathematician. Together with Ernst Eberlein, Heinz Gerhäuser (former Institutes Director of Fraunhofer IIS), Bernhard Grill, Jürgen Herre and Harald Popp (all Fraun ...
: Inventor and audio engineer; father of audio compression format MPEG Audio Layer 3, more commonly known as MP3. *
Karl Ferdinand Braun Karl Ferdinand Braun (; 6 June 1850 – 20 April 1918) was a German electrical engineer, inventor, physicist and Nobel laureate in physics. Braun contributed significantly to the development of radio and television technology: he shared the ...
: Inventor of the CRT oscilloscope in 1897. Braun contributed significantly to the development of radio and television technology: he shared with
Guglielmo Marconi Guglielmo Giovanni Maria Marconi, 1st Marquis of Marconi (; 25 April 187420 July 1937) was an Italians, Italian inventor and electrical engineering, electrical engineer, known for his creation of a practical radio wave-based Wireless telegrap ...
the 1909
Nobel Prize in Physics ) , image = Nobel Prize.png , alt = A golden medallion with an embossed image of a bearded man facing left in profile. To the left of the man is the text "ALFR•" then "NOBEL", and on the right, the text (smaller) "NAT•" then " ...
. *
Wernher von Braun Wernher Magnus Maximilian Freiherr von Braun ( , ; 23 March 191216 June 1977) was a German and American aerospace engineer and space architect. He was a member of the Nazi Party and Allgemeine SS, as well as the leading figure in the develop ...
: The preeminent rocket engineer of the 20th century. Developed the
V-2 The V-2 (german: Vergeltungswaffe 2, lit=Retaliation Weapon 2), with the technical name ''Aggregat 4'' (A-4), was the world’s first long-range guided ballistic missile. The missile, powered by a liquid-propellant rocket engine, was develope ...
rocket for Germany. Built
Saturn V Saturn V is a retired American super heavy-lift launch vehicle developed by NASA under the Apollo program for human exploration of the Moon. The rocket was human-rated, with multistage rocket, three stages, and powered with liquid-propellant r ...
rocket in USA which put man on the moon. * Adolf Brix: developed the unit for
specific gravity Relative density, or specific gravity, is the ratio of the density (mass of a unit volume) of a substance to the density of a given reference material. Specific gravity for liquids is nearly always measured with respect to water (molecule), wa ...
of liquids, degree Brix (°Bx). *
Korbinian Brodmann Korbinian Brodmann (17 November 1868 – 22 August 1918) was a German neurologist who became famous for mapping the cerebral cortex and defining 52 distinct regions, known as Brodmann areas, based on their cytoarchitectonic (histological) char ...
: neurologist,
Brodmann area A Brodmann area is a region of the cerebral cortex, in the human or other primate brain, defined by its cytoarchitecture, or histological structure and organization of cells. History Brodmann areas were originally defined and numbered by th ...
in brain *
Walter Bruch Walter Bruch (2 March 1908 – 5 May 1990) was a German electrical engineer and pioneer of German television. He was the inventor of Closed-circuit television. He invented the PAL colour television system at Telefunken in the early 1960s. In add ...
:
PAL Phase Alternating Line (PAL) is a colour encoding system for analogue television. It was one of three major analogue colour television standards, the others being NTSC and SECAM. In most countries it was broadcast at 625 lines, 50 fields (25 ...
, colour encoding system for analogue television *
Friedrich Wilhelm Gustav Bruhn Friedrich Wilhelm Gustav Bruhn (11 November 1853 – 1927) was a German inventor. Life Bruhn invented modern taximeter in Berlin. He worked for German company Westendarp & Pieper Hamburg. In 1920 he became leader of this company. Bruhn was ...
: Inventor of
Taximeter A taximeter or fare meter is a mechanical or electronic device installed in taxicabs and auto rickshaws that calculates passenger fares based on a combination of distance travelled and waiting time. Its shortened form, "taxi", is also a metony ...
*
Ernst Büchner Ernst Wilhelm Büchner (18 March 1850 – 25 April 1924) was the German industrial chemist after whom the Büchner flask and Büchner funnel are named. The patent for his two inventions was published in 1888. Life His father was the pharmacist ...
: Chemist and inventor of
Büchner flask A Büchner flask, also known as a vacuum flask,The use of the term ''vacuum flask'' sometimes causes confusion with the Thermos flask filter flask, suction flask, side-arm flask, Kitasato flask or Bunsen flask, is a thick-walled Erlenmeyer fla ...
and
Büchner funnel A Büchner funnel is a piece of laboratory equipment used in filtration. It is traditionally made of porcelain, but glass and plastic funnels are also available. On top of the funnel-shaped part there is a cylinder with a fritted glass disc/per ...
. *
Robert Bunsen Robert Wilhelm Eberhard Bunsen (; 30 March 1811 – 16 August 1899) was a German chemist. He investigated emission spectra of heated elements, and discovered caesium (in 1860) and rubidium (in 1861) with the physicist Gustav Kirchhoff. The Bu ...
: Chemist who developed the
Bunsen burner A Bunsen burner, named after Robert Bunsen, is a kind of ambient air gas burner used as laboratory equipment; it produces a single open gas flame, and is used for heating, sterilization, and combustion. The gas can be natural gas (which is main ...
, and with
Gustav Kirchhoff Gustav Robert Kirchhoff (; 12 March 1824 – 17 October 1887) was a German physicist who contributed to the fundamental understanding of electrical circuits, spectroscopy, and the emission of black-body radiation by heated objects. He ...
he invented the
spectrometer A spectrometer () is a scientific instrument used to separate and measure spectral components of a physical phenomenon. Spectrometer is a broad term often used to describe instruments that measure a continuous variable of a phenomenon where the ...
(1859) and discovered caesium (1860) and rubidium (1861). *
Wilhelm Busch Heinrich Christian Wilhelm Busch (14 April 1832 – 9 January 1908) was a German humorist, poet, illustrator, and painter. He published wildly innovative illustrated tales that remain influential to this day. Busch drew on the tropes of f ...
: Caricaturist, painter and poet; father of comics. *
Christian Friedrich Ludwig Buschmann Christian Friedrich Ludwig Buschmann (17 June 1805 – 1 October 1864) was a German musical instrument maker and inventor, often credited with inventing the harmonica and also the accordion. Biography Thuringia Buschmann was born in Friedric ...
: musical instrument maker. Pioneer and promoter of the
harmonica The harmonica, also known as a French harp or mouth organ, is a free reed wind instrument used worldwide in many musical genres, notably in blues, American folk music, classical music, jazz, country, and rock. The many types of harmonica inclu ...
. *
Adolf Busemann Adolf Busemann (20 April 1901 – 3 November 1986) was a German aerospace engineer and influential Nazi-era pioneer in aerodynamics, specialising in supersonic airflows. He introduced the concept of swept wings and, after emigrating in 1947 to t ...
: aerospace engineer. Discovered the effect of
swept wing A swept wing is a wing that angles either backward or occasionally forward from its root rather than in a straight sideways direction. Swept wings have been flown since the pioneer days of aviation. Wing sweep at high speeds was first investigate ...
for modern aircraft in 1935. *
Adolf Butenandt Adolf Friedrich Johann Butenandt (; 24 March 1903 – 18 January 1995) was a German biochemist. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1939 for his "work on sex hormones." He initially rejected the award in accordance with government po ...
: biochemist. Discovered primary female sex hormones. Shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Leopold Ruzicka in 1939. *
Heinrich Wilhelm Brandes Heinrich Wilhelm Brandes (; 27 July 1777 – 17 May 1834) was a German physicist, meteorologist, and astronomer. Brandes was born in 1777 in Groden near Ritzebüttel (a former exclave of the Free Imperial City of Hamburg, today in Cuxhaven), th ...
: Founder of synoptic meteorology. As an astronomer, he was noted for demonstrating that
meteors A meteoroid () is a small rocky or metallic body in outer space. Meteoroids are defined as objects significantly smaller than asteroids, ranging in size from grains to objects up to a meter wide. Objects smaller than this are classified as mic ...
occur in the upper atmosphere and thus not really a meteorological phenomenon. *
Karl Friedrich Bonhoeffer Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer (13 January 1899 – 15 May 1957) was a German chemist. Education and career Born in Breslau, he was an older brother of martyred theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. His father was neurologist Karl Bonhoeffer and his moth ...
: German chemist, who, together with
Paul Harteck Paul Karl Maria Harteck (20 July 190222 January 1985) was an Austrian physical chemist. In 1945 under Operation Epsilon in "the big sweep" throughout Germany, Harteck was arrested by the allied British and American Armed Forces for suspicion of ...
, discovered the
spin isomers of hydrogen Molecular hydrogen occurs in two isomeric forms, one with its two proton nuclear spins aligned parallel (orthohydrogen), the other with its two proton spins aligned antiparallel (parahydrogen).P. Atkins and J. de Paula, Atkins' ''Physical Chemis ...
, orthohydrogen and parahydrogen in 1929.


C

*
Georg Cantor Georg Ferdinand Ludwig Philipp Cantor ( , ;  – January 6, 1918) was a German mathematician. He played a pivotal role in the creation of set theory, which has become a fundamental theory in mathematics. Cantor established the importance of ...
: Mathematician, discoverer of the
set theory Set theory is the branch of mathematical logic that studies sets, which can be informally described as collections of objects. Although objects of any kind can be collected into a set, set theory, as a branch of mathematics, is mostly conce ...
(1870s), which has become a fundamental theory in mathematics. *
Ernst Boris Chain Sir Ernst Boris Chain (19 June 1906 – 12 August 1979) was a German-born British biochemist best known for being a co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on penicillin. Life and career Chain was born in Ber ...
: biochemist, co-recipient of the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his work on
penicillin Penicillins (P, PCN or PEN) are a group of β-lactam antibiotics originally obtained from ''Penicillium'' moulds, principally '' P. chrysogenum'' and '' P. rubens''. Most penicillins in clinical use are synthesised by P. chrysogenum using ...
(together with Fleming). *
Carl von Clausewitz Carl Philipp Gottfried (or Gottlieb) von Clausewitz (; 1 June 1780 – 16 November 1831) was a Prussian general and military theorist who stressed the "moral", in modern terms meaning psychological, and political aspects of waging war. His mos ...
: The father of modern
military theory Military theory is the analysis of normative behavior and trends in military affairs and military history, beyond simply describing events in war. Theories and conceptions of warfare have varied in different places throughout human history. T ...
. *
Rudolf Clausius Rudolf Julius Emanuel Clausius (; 2 January 1822 – 24 August 1888) was a German physicist and mathematician and is considered one of the central founding fathers of the science of thermodynamics. By his restatement of Sadi Carnot's principle ...
: Mathematician and physicist known for the
Second law of thermodynamics The second law of thermodynamics is a physical law based on universal experience concerning heat and Energy transformation, energy interconversions. One simple statement of the law is that heat always moves from hotter objects to colder objects ( ...
. *
Justus Claproth Justus Claproth (28 December 1728 – 20 February 1805) was a German jurist and inventor of the deinking process of recycled paper. See also *German inventors and discoverers ---- __NOTOC__ This is a list of German inventors and discovere ...
: Jurist and inventor of recyclable paper and
deinking Deinking is the industrial process of removing printing ink from paperfibers of recycled paper to make deinked pulp. The key in the deinking process is the ability to detach ink from the fibers. This is achieved by a combination of mechanical ac ...
. *
Nicolaus Copernicus Nicolaus Copernicus (; pl, Mikołaj Kopernik; gml, Niklas Koppernigk, german: Nikolaus Kopernikus; 19 February 1473 – 24 May 1543) was a Renaissance polymath, active as a mathematician, astronomer, and Catholic Church, Catholic cano ...
: Astronomer, formulated a
heliocentric Heliocentrism (also known as the Heliocentric model) is the astronomical model in which the Earth and planets revolve around the Sun at the center of the universe. Historically, heliocentrism was opposed to geocentrism, which placed the Earth at ...
model A model is an informative representation of an object, person or system. The term originally denoted the plans of a building in late 16th-century English, and derived via French and Italian ultimately from Latin ''modulus'', a measure. Models c ...
of the
universe The universe is all of space and time and their contents, including planets, stars, galaxies, and all other forms of matter and energy. The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological description of the development of the universe. Acc ...
which placed the Sun, rather than the Earth, at the centre. * Manfred Curry:
German American German Americans (german: Deutschamerikaner, ) are Americans who have full or partial German ancestry. With an estimated size of approximately 43 million in 2019, German Americans are the largest of the self-reported ancestry groups by the Unite ...
yachtsman, developed the cam cleat used on sailboats to easily and quickly secure a rope, discoverer of the pseudoscientific phenomenon of "geomagnetic lines" called the Curry Grid.


D

*
Gottlieb Daimler Gottlieb Wilhelm Daimler (; 17 March 1834 – 6 March 1900) was a German engineer, industrial designer and industrialist born in Schorndorf (Kingdom of Württemberg, a federal state of the German Confederation), in what is now Germany. He was a ...
: Invented the first high-speed internal combustion petrol engine and the first four-wheel automobile, also the first
internal combustion An internal combustion engine (ICE or IC engine) is a heat engine in which the combustion of a fuel occurs with an oxidizer (usually air) in a combustion chamber that is an integral part of the working fluid flow circuit. In an internal combus ...
motorcycle, the ''Reitwagen''. * Adolf "Adi" Dassler: Sports shoes with and without spikes; founder of
Adidas Adidas AG (; stylized as adidas since 1949) is a German multinational corporation, founded and headquartered in Herzogenaurach, Bavaria, that designs and manufactures shoes, clothing and accessories. It is the largest sportswear manufactur ...
. *
Rudolf Dassler Rudolf "Rudi" Dassler (26 March 1898 – 27 October 1974) was a German cobbler, businessman, a member of the Nazi party and also the founder of the sportswear company Puma. He was the older brother of Adidas founder, Adolf "Adi" Dassler. The b ...
: First sport shoes with screw-in shoe spikes, 1949; founder of Puma. *
Hans Georg Dehmelt Hans Georg Dehmelt (; 9 September 1922 – 7 March 2017) was a German and American physicist, who was awarded a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1989, for co-developing the ion trap technique (Penning trap) with Wolfgang Paul, for which they shared one- ...
: Physicist. Co-developed the non-magnetic quadrupole mass filter which laid the foundation for what we now call an
ion trap An ion trap is a combination of electric and/or magnetic fields used to capture charged particles — known as ions — often in a system isolated from an external environment. Atomic and molecular ion traps have a number of applications in phy ...
. Shared the Nobel Prize in 1989. *
Max Delbrück Max Ludwig Henning Delbrück (; September 4, 1906 – March 9, 1981) was a German–American biophysicist who participated in launching the molecular biology research program in the late 1930s. He stimulated physical science, physical scientist ...
:
German American German Americans (german: Deutschamerikaner, ) are Americans who have full or partial German ancestry. With an estimated size of approximately 43 million in 2019, German Americans are the largest of the self-reported ancestry groups by the Unite ...
biophysicist. He was awarded the
Nobel prize The Nobel Prizes ( ; sv, Nobelpriset ; no, Nobelprisen ) are five separate prizes that, according to Alfred Nobel's will of 1895, are awarded to "those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind." Alfr ...
for discovering that bacteria become resistant to viruses (phages) as a result of genetic mutations. * Johann Christoph Denner: Woodwind instrument maker, inventor of the
clarinet The clarinet is a musical instrument in the woodwind family. The instrument has a nearly cylindrical bore and a flared bell, and uses a single reed to produce sound. Clarinets comprise a family of instruments of differing sizes and pitches ...
. *
Jürgen Dethloff Jürgen Dethloff (12 May 1924 in Stettin – 31 December 2002) was a German inventor and engineer. Achievements Together with German inventor Helmut Gröttrup he invented the smart card (chip card). A successor of the original chip i ...
: Inventor and engineer, co-inventor of the
Smart card A smart card, chip card, or integrated circuit card (ICC or IC card) is a physical electronic authentication device, used to control access to a resource. It is typically a plastic credit card-sized card with an embedded integrated circuit (IC) c ...
(together with
Helmut Gröttrup Helmut Gröttrup (12 February 1916 – 4 July 1981) was a German engineer, rocket scientist and inventor of the smart card. During World War II, he worked in the German V-2 rocket program under Wernher von Braun. From 1946 to 1950 he headed a grou ...
). *
Johann Friedrich Dieffenbach Johann Friedrich Dieffenbach (1 February 1792 – 11 November 1847) was a German surgeon. He was born in Königsberg and died in Berlin. Dieffenbach specialized in skin transplantation and plastic surgery. His work in rhinoplastic and maxillof ...
: Pioneer of skin transplantation and cosmetic surgery. * Ernst Dickmanns: Developer of the first
driverless car A self-driving car, also known as an autonomous car, driver-less car, or robotic car (robo-car), is a car that is capable of traveling without human input.Xie, S.; Hu, J.; Bhowmick, P.; Ding, Z.; Arvin, F.,Distributed Motion Planning for S ...
. *
Otto Diels Otto Paul Hermann Diels (; 23 January 1876 – 7 March 1954) was a German chemist. His most notable work was done with Kurt Alder on the Diels–Alder reaction, a method for diene synthesis. The pair was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry ...
:
Diels–Alder reaction In organic chemistry, the Diels–Alder reaction is a chemical reaction between a conjugated diene and a substituted alkene, commonly termed the dienophile, to form a substituted cyclohexene derivative. It is the prototypical example of a peric ...
(together with
Kurt Alder Kurt Alder (; 10 July 1902 – 20 June 1958) was a German chemist and Nobel laureate. Biography Alder was born in the industrial area of Königshütte, Silesia (modern day Chorzów, Upper Silesia, Poland), where he received his early schoo ...
), a method for
diene In organic chemistry a diene ( ) (diolefin ( ) or alkadiene) is a covalent compound that contains two double bonds, usually among carbon atoms. They thus contain two alk''ene'' units, with the standard prefix ''di'' of systematic nomenclature. ...
synthesis. The pair was awarded the
Nobel Prize in Chemistry ) , image = Nobel Prize.png , alt = A golden medallion with an embossed image of a bearded man facing left in profile. To the left of the man is the text "ALFR•" then "NOBEL", and on the right, the text (smaller) "NAT•" then "M ...
in 1950 for their work. *
Rudolf Diesel Rudolf Christian Karl Diesel (, ; 18 March 1858 – 29 September 1913) was a German inventor and mechanical engineer who is famous for having invented the diesel engine, which burns diesel fuel; both are named after him. Early life and educat ...
: Inventor of the
diesel engine The diesel engine, named after Rudolf Diesel, is an internal combustion engine in which ignition of the fuel is caused by the elevated temperature of the air in the cylinder due to mechanical compression; thus, the diesel engine is a so-call ...
1893. *
Johann Wolfgang Döbereiner Johann Wolfgang Döbereiner (13 December 1780 – 24 March 1849) was a German chemist who is best known for work that foreshadowed the periodic law for the chemical elements, and for inventing the first lighter, which was known as the Döbere ...
, inventor of
Döbereiner's lamp Döbereiner's lamp, also called a "tinderbox" ("Feuerzeug"), is a lighter invented in 1823 by the German chemist Johann Wolfgang Döbereiner. The lighter is based on the Fürstenberger lighter (invented in Basel in 1780; in which hydrogen gas is ...
, 1823 *
Gerhard Domagk Gerhard Johannes Paul Domagk (; 30 October 1895 – 24 April 1964) was a German pathologist and bacteriologist. He is credited with the discovery of sulfonamidochrysoidine (KL730) as an antibiotic for which he received the 1939 Nobel Prize in Phy ...
: Discovery of what would become the first commercially available antibiotic. *
Christian Doppler Christian Andreas Doppler ( (); 29 November 1803 – 17 March 1853) was an Austrian mathematician and physicist. He is celebrated for his principle – known as the Doppler effect – that the observed frequency of a wave depends on the relative ...
: Discovered the Doppler effect. *
Walter Robert Dornberger Major-General Dr. Walter Robert Dornberger (6 September 1895 – 26 June 1980) was a German Army artillery officer whose career spanned World War I and World War II. He was a leader of Nazi Germany's V-2 rocket programme and other projects a ...
: Co-inventor of the
V-2 The V-2 (german: Vergeltungswaffe 2, lit=Retaliation Weapon 2), with the technical name ''Aggregat 4'' (A-4), was the world’s first long-range guided ballistic missile. The missile, powered by a liquid-propellant rocket engine, was develope ...
rocket. *
Karl Drais Karl Freiherr von Drais (full name: Karl Friedrich Christian Ludwig Freiherr Drais von Sauerbronn) (29 April 1785 – 10 December 1851) was a noble German forest official and significant inventor in the Biedermeier period. He was born and died ...
: Inventor of the bicycle and typewriter (1821) among other things. * Peter Ferdinand Drucker: Invented the science of modern management.


E

*
Paul Ehrlich Paul Ehrlich (; 14 March 1854 – 20 August 1915) was a Nobel Prize-winning German physician and scientist who worked in the fields of hematology, immunology, and antimicrobial chemotherapy. Among his foremost achievements were finding a cure ...
: Scientist in the fields of hematology, immunology, and chemotherapy, and Nobel laureate. Developed an effective treatment against syphilis. * Caroline Eichler: Inventor, first woman to receive a patent (for her leg prosthesis) *
Ludwig Elsbett Ludwig Elsbett (8 November 1913  – 28 March 2003) was the inventor of the Elsbett Engine. Elsbett was one of nine children of the farmer Viktor Elsbett and his wife Maria. He grew up in agriculture, and was originally trained as a fitte ...
: Developed new concepts for Diesel engines which drastically enhanced efficiency. *
Douglas Engelbart Douglas Carl Engelbart (January 30, 1925 – July 2, 2013) was an American engineer and inventor, and an early computer and Internet pioneer. He is best known for his work on founding the field of human–computer interaction, particularly ...
:
German American German Americans (german: Deutschamerikaner, ) are Americans who have full or partial German ancestry. With an estimated size of approximately 43 million in 2019, German Americans are the largest of the self-reported ancestry groups by the Unite ...
inventor of the
computer mouse A computer mouse (plural mice, sometimes mouses) is a hand-held pointing device that detects two-dimensional motion relative to a surface. This motion is typically translated into the motion of a pointer on a display, which allows a smooth c ...
. *
Evaristo Conrado Engelberg Evaristo Conrado Engelberg (26 October 1853–1932) was a Brazilian mechanical engineer and inventor. He is the inventor of the Engelberg huller, a machine used to strip the husks from rice and coffee during harvest. He was born to German i ...
: Inventor in 1885 of a machine used to remove the husks from rice and coffee, the Engelberg huller. *
Friedrich Engels Friedrich Engels ( ,"Engels"
'' Karl Marx Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...
the economic and sociopolitical worldview
Marxism Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand S ...
. *
Hugo Erdmann Hugo Wilhelm Traugott Erdmann (8 May 1862 – 25 June 1910) was the German chemist who discovered, together with his doctoral advisor Jacob Volhard, the Volhard-Erdmann cyclization. In 1898 he was the first who coined the term ''noble gas'' (the ...
: Chemist who discovered, together with his doctoral advisor
Jacob Volhard Jacob Volhard (4 June 1834 – 14 January 1910) was the German chemist who discovered, together with his student Hugo Erdmann, the Volhard–Erdmann cyclization reaction. He was also responsible for the improvement of the Hell–Volhard–Ze ...
, the Volhard-Erdmann cyclization. In 1898 he was the first who coined the term ''
noble gas The noble gases (historically also the inert gases; sometimes referred to as aerogens) make up a class of chemical elements with similar properties; under standard conditions, they are all odorless, colorless, monatomic gases with very low chemi ...
'' (the original noun is in
German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) ** Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...
). *
Hugo Erfurt Hugo Erfurt (13 February 1834 in Schwelm – 4 March 1922 in Dahlhausen at Beyenburg) was a German pharmacist and inventor. Life He invented ingrain wallpaper Ingrain (or wood-chip) wallpaper is a decorating material. It consists of ...
: Ingrain wallpaper *
Gerhard Ertl Gerhard Ertl (; born 10 October 1936) is a German physicist and a Professor emeritus at the Department of Physical Chemistry, Fritz-Haber-Institut der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft in Berlin, Germany. Ertl's research laid the foundation of modern su ...
: German physicist who laid the foundation of modern surface chemistry, which has helped explain how fuel cells produce energy without pollution, how catalytic converters clean up car exhausts and even why iron rusts, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said. Nobel laureate as of 2007. *
Leonhard Euler Leonhard Euler ( , ; 15 April 170718 September 1783) was a Swiss mathematician, physicist, astronomer, geographer, logician and engineer who founded the studies of graph theory and topology and made pioneering and influential discoveries in ma ...
: Swiss mathematician and physicist. One of the most influential mathematicians of the 18th century. *
Emil Erlenmeyer Richard August Carl Emil Erlenmeyer (28 June 182522 January 1909), known simply as Emil Erlenmeyer, was a German chemist known for contributing to the early development of the theory of structure, formulating the Erlenmeyer rule, and designing ...
: German
chemist A chemist (from Greek ''chēm(ía)'' alchemy; replacing ''chymist'' from Medieval Latin ''alchemist'') is a scientist trained in the study of chemistry. Chemists study the composition of matter and its properties. Chemists carefully describe th ...
known for contributing to the early development of the theory of structure, formulating the
Erlenmeyer rule In organic chemistry, alkenols (shortened to enols) are a type of reactive structure or intermediate in organic chemistry that is represented as an alkene ( olefin) with a hydroxyl group attached to one end of the alkene double bond (). The t ...
, and designing the
Erlenmeyer flask An Erlenmeyer flask, also known as a conical flask (British English) or a titration flask, is a type of laboratory flask which features a flat bottom, a conical body, and a cylindrical neck. It is named after the German chemist Emil Erlenmeyer ...
or the conical flask, a type of chemical flask, which is named after him.


F

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Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit FRS (; ; 24 May 1686 – 16 September 1736) was a physicist, inventor, and scientific instrument maker. Born in Poland to a family of German extraction, he later moved to the Dutch Republic at age 15, where he spen ...
:
Fahrenheit The Fahrenheit scale () is a temperature scale based on one proposed in 1724 by the physicist Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit (1686–1736). It uses the degree Fahrenheit (symbol: °F) as the unit. Several accounts of how he originally defined his ...
, temperature scale, Fahrenheit hydrometer *
Gerd Faltings Gerd Faltings (; born 28 July 1954) is a German mathematician known for his work in arithmetic geometry. Education From 1972 to 1978, Faltings studied mathematics and physics at the University of Münster. In 1978 he received his PhD in mathema ...
:
Mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change. History On ...
known for his work in
arithmetic Arithmetic () is an elementary part of mathematics that consists of the study of the properties of the traditional operations on numbers— addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, exponentiation, and extraction of roots. In the 19th ...
algebraic geometry Algebraic geometry is a branch of mathematics, classically studying zeros of multivariate polynomials. Modern algebraic geometry is based on the use of abstract algebraic techniques, mainly from commutative algebra, for solving geometrical ...
,
Fields Medal The Fields Medal is a prize awarded to two, three, or four mathematicians under 40 years of age at the International Congress of the International Mathematical Union (IMU), a meeting that takes place every four years. The name of the award ho ...
in 1986 for proving the
Mordell conjecture Louis Joel Mordell (28 January 1888 – 12 March 1972) was an American-born British mathematician, known for pioneering research in number theory. He was born in Philadelphia, United States, in a Jewish family of Lithuanian extraction. Educati ...
. * Otto Feick:
Wheel gymnastics Wheel gymnastics (German: Rhönradturnen) is a form of gymnastics that originated in Germany. Wheel gymnasts do exercises in a large wheel or hoop known as the Rhönrad, gymnastics wheel, gym wheel, or German wheel, in the beginning also know ...
in 1925. * Wilhelm Emil Fein: Invented the electrically driven hand drill in 1895. *
Adolf Gaston Eugen Fick Adolf Gaston Eugen Fick (22 February 1852 – 11 February 1937) was a German ophthalmologist who invented the contact lens. He was the nephew of the German physiologist Adolf Eugen Fick, and the son of the German anatomy professor Franz Ludwig ...
: Glass
Contact lenses Contact lenses, or simply contacts, are thin lenses placed directly on the surface of the eyes. Contact lenses are ocular prosthetic devices used by over 150 million people worldwide, and they can be worn to correct vision or for cosmeti ...
* Richard Fiedler: Invented the modern
flamethrower A flamethrower is a ranged incendiary device designed to project a controllable jet of fire. First deployed by the Byzantine Empire in the 7th century AD, flamethrowers saw use in modern times during World War I, and more widely in World ...
in 1901. *
Artur Fischer Artur Fischer (31 December 1919 – 27 January 2016) was a German inventor. He is best known for inventing the plastic expanding wall plug. Born in Tumlingen, Artur Fischer was the son of the village tailor Georg Fischer. His mother Pauline, ...
: Invented the (split)
wallplug A wall plug (UK English),In US English, a wall plug would likely be understood as an electric socket on a wall, although that is a misnomer as a socket is a device that accepts a plug. also known as an anchor (US) or " Rawlplug" (UK), is a fibr ...
made of plastic in 1958. He invented flash light photography. Fischer held over 1100 patents and currently holds the records for most patents for any single human, even more than
Thomas Alva Edison Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847October 18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures. These invention ...
. Further inventions are (bone-)plugs for fixing
bone fractures A bone fracture (abbreviated FRX or Fx, Fx, or #) is a medical condition in which there is a partial or complete break in the continuity of any bone in the body. In more severe cases, the bone may be broken into several fragments, known as a '' ...
and one of Fischer's most recent inventions is a gadget that makes it possible to hold and cut the top off an egg of any size. *
Hermann Emil Fischer Hermann Emil Louis Fischer (; 9 October 1852 – 15 July 1919) was a German chemist and 1902 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He discovered the Fischer esterification. He also developed the Fischer projection, a symbolic way of dra ...
: German chemist and 1902 recipient of the
Nobel Prize in Chemistry ) , image = Nobel Prize.png , alt = A golden medallion with an embossed image of a bearded man facing left in profile. To the left of the man is the text "ALFR•" then "NOBEL", and on the right, the text (smaller) "NAT•" then "M ...
. He discovered the Fischer esterification. He developed the
Fischer projection In chemistry, the Fischer projection, devised by Emil Fischer in 1891, is a two-dimensional representation of a three-dimensional organic molecule by projection. Fischer projections were originally proposed for the depiction of carbohydrates ...
, a symbolic way of drawing asymmetric carbon atoms. He is known for study of
sugars Sugar is the generic name for sweet-tasting, soluble carbohydrates, many of which are used in food. Simple sugars, also called monosaccharides, include glucose, fructose, and galactose. Compound sugars, also called disaccharides or double ...
&
purines Purine is a heterocyclic aromatic organic compound that consists of two rings ( pyrimidine and imidazole) fused together. It is water-soluble. Purine also gives its name to the wider class of molecules, purines, which include substituted purines ...
. * Franz Fischer and Hans Tropsch: Invented a process in 1925 to turn coal into synthesis gas, and still further into liquid hydrocarbons. The process is a key component in modern
gas to liquids Gas to liquids (GTL) is a refinery process to convert natural gas or other gaseous hydrocarbons into longer-chain hydrocarbons, such as gasoline or diesel fuel. Methane-rich gases are converted into liquid synthetic fuels. Two general strategies ...
processes. *
Wilhelm Rudolph Fittig Wilhelm Rudolph Fittig (6 December 183519 November 1910) was a German chemist. He discovered the pinacol coupling reaction, mesitylene, diacetyl and biphenyl. Fittig studied the action of sodium on ketones and hydrocarbons. He discovered the Fi ...
: He discovered the
pinacol coupling reaction A pinacol coupling reaction is an organic reaction in which a carbon–carbon bond is formed between the carbonyl groups of an aldehyde or a ketone in presence of an electron donor in a free radical process. The reaction product is a vicinal diol. ...
,
mesitylene Mesitylene or 1,3,5-trimethylbenzene is a derivative of benzene with three methyl substituents positioned symmetrically around the ring. The other two isomeric trimethylbenzenes are 1,2,4-trimethylbenzene (pseudocumene) and 1,2,3-trimethylbenze ...
,
diacetyl Diacetyl (IUPAC systematic name: butanedione or butane-2,3-dione) is an organic compound with the chemical formula (CH3CO)2. It is a yellow liquid with an intensely buttery flavor. It is a vicinal diketone (two C=O groups, side-by-side). Diacet ...
and
biphenyl Biphenyl (also known as diphenyl, phenylbenzene, 1,1′-biphenyl, lemonene or BP) is an organic compound that forms colorless crystals. Particularly in older literature, compounds containing the functional group consisting of biphenyl less one ...
. *
Irmgard Flügge-Lotz Irmgard Flügge-Lotz, née Lotz (16 July 1903 – 22 May 1974) was a German-American mathematician and aerospace engineer. She was a pioneer in the development of the theory of discontinuous automatic control, which has found wide application ...
: She worked on what she called "discontinuous automatic control", which laid the foundation for automatic on-off aircraft control systems in jets. *
Werner Forssmann Werner Theodor Otto Forßmann (Forssmann in English; ; 29 August 1904 – 1 June 1979) was a German researcher and physician from Germany who shared the 1956 Nobel Prize in Medicine (with Andre Frederic Cournand and Dickinson W. Richards) for ...
: Performed the first human cardiac catheterisation. Shared the Nobel Prize for Medicine 1956 *
Joachim Frank Joachim Frank () (born September 12, 1940) is a German-American biophysicist at Columbia University and a Nobel laureate. He is regarded as the founder of single-particle cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM), for which he shared the Nobel Prize i ...
: co-invented
cryo-electron microscopy Cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM) is a cryomicroscopy technique applied on samples cooled to cryogenic temperatures. For biological specimens, the structure is preserved by embedding in an environment of vitreous ice. An aqueous sample s ...
. Shared the Nobel Prize for Chemistry 2017 *
Joseph von Fraunhofer Joseph Ritter von Fraunhofer (; ; 6 March 1787 – 7 June 1826) was a German physicist and optical lens manufacturer. He made optical glass, an achromatic telescope, and objective lenses. He also invented the spectroscope and developed diffract ...
: Discovery of the dark absorption lines known as
Fraunhofer lines In physics and optics, the Fraunhofer lines are a set of spectral absorption lines named after the German physicist Joseph von Fraunhofer (1787–1826). The lines were originally observed as dark features (absorption lines) in the optical spectru ...
in the Sun's
spectrum A spectrum (plural ''spectra'' or ''spectrums'') is a condition that is not limited to a specific set of values but can vary, without gaps, across a continuum. The word was first used scientifically in optics to describe the rainbow of colors i ...
, which laid foundation for modern astronomy and astrophysics, and for making excellent optical glass and achromatic telescope lenses. *
Gottlob Frege Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege (; ; 8 November 1848 – 26 July 1925) was a German philosopher, logician, and mathematician. He was a mathematics professor at the University of Jena, and is understood by many to be the father of analytic phil ...
: He is generally considered to be the father of
analytic philosophy Analytic philosophy is a branch and tradition of philosophy using analysis, popular in the Western world and particularly the Anglosphere, which began around the turn of the 20th century in the contemporary era in the United Kingdom, United Sta ...
. Had influence on
Carnap Rudolf Carnap (; ; 18 May 1891 – 14 September 1970) was a German-language philosopher who was active in Europe before 1935 and in the United States thereafter. He was a major member of the Vienna Circle and an advocate of logical positivism. ...
, Russell, and
Wittgenstein Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein ( ; ; 26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an Austrians, Austrian-British people, British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy o ...
*
Otto Frenzl Otto is a masculine German given name and a surname. It originates as an Old High German short form (variants ''Audo'', '' Odo'', ''Udo'') of Germanic names beginning in ''aud-'', an element meaning "wealth, prosperity". The name is recorded f ...
: Aeronautical pioneer, developed the area rule in 1943, a design technique for airfoils used to reduce an aircraft's drag at transonic and supersonic speeds. Later it was independently developed again by Richard T. Whitcomb in 1952. *
Sigmund Freud Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating psychopathology, pathologies explained as originatin ...
:
Neurologist Neurology (from el, νεῦρον (neûron), "string, nerve" and the suffix -logia, "study of") is the branch of medicine dealing with the diagnosis and treatment of all categories of conditions and disease involving the brain, the spinal c ...
who became known as the founding father of
psychoanalysis PsychoanalysisFrom Greek: + . is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques"What is psychoanalysis? Of course, one is supposed to answer that it is many things — a theory, a research method, a therapy, a body of knowledge. In what might b ...
. *
Nikolaus Friedreich Nikolaus Friedreich (1 July 1825 in Würzburg – 6 July 1882 in Heidelberg) was a German pathologist and neurologist, and a third generation physician in the Friedreich family. His father was psychiatrist Johann Baptist Friedreich (1796–1862) ...
: Discovery of Friedreich-Auerbach disease (together with Leopold Auerbach) *
Friedrich Fröbel Friedrich Wilhelm August Fröbel or Froebel (; 21 April 1782 – 21 June 1852) was a German pedagogue, a student of Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, who laid the foundation for modern education based on the recognition that children have unique need ...
: Pedagogue, who laid the foundation for modern education. He created the concept of the
kindergarten Kindergarten is a preschool educational approach based on playing, singing, practical activities such as drawing, and social interaction as part of the transition from home to school. Such institutions were originally made in the late 18th cent ...
. * Klaus Fuchs: Theoretical physicist involved with the
Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...
Project; at the same time Soviet spy. *
Johann Carl Fuhlrott Prof. Dr. Johann Carl Fuhlrott (31 December 1803, Leinefelde, Germany – 17 October 1877, Wuppertal) was an early German paleoanthropologist. He is famous for recognizing the significance of the bones of Neanderthal 1, a Neanderthal specimen dis ...
: Had the insight to recognize the
Neanderthal Neanderthals (, also ''Homo neanderthalensis'' and erroneously ''Homo sapiens neanderthalensis''), also written as Neandertals, are an extinct species or subspecies of archaic humans who lived in Eurasia until about 40,000 years ago. While th ...
bones for what they were: the remains of a previously unknown type of humans. He (together with Schaafhausen) is considered to be the father of
paleoanthropology Paleoanthropology or paleo-anthropology is a branch of paleontology and anthropology which seeks to understand the early development of anatomically modern humans, a process known as hominization, through the reconstruction of evolutionary kinship ...
.


G

* Johann Galle: astronomer, discovery of planet
Neptune Neptune is the eighth planet from the Sun and the farthest known planet in the Solar System. It is the fourth-largest planet in the Solar System by diameter, the third-most-massive planet, and the densest giant planet. It is 17 times ...
* Hermann Ganswindt: Inventor and spaceflight scientist, whose inventions (such as the dirigible, the helicopter, and the internal combustion engine) are thought to have been ahead of his time. *
Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss (; german: Gauß ; la, Carolus Fridericus Gauss; 30 April 177723 February 1855) was a German mathematician and physicist who made significant contributions to many fields in mathematics and science. Sometimes refer ...
: German mathematician and physical scientist who contributed significantly to many fields, including number theory, statistics, analysis, differential geometry, geodesy, geophysics, electrostatics, astronomy and optics. Sometimes referred to as "the Prince of Mathematicians". *
Hans Geiger Johannes Wilhelm "Hans" Geiger (; ; 30 September 1882 – 24 September 1945) was a German physicist. He is best known as the co-inventor of the detector component of the Geiger counter and for the Geiger–Marsden experiment which discover ...
: Inventor of the
Geiger–Müller counter A Geiger counter (also known as a Geiger–Müller counter) is an electronic instrument used for detecting and measuring ionizing radiation. It is widely used in applications such as radiation dosimetry, radiological protection, experimental phy ...
in 1928. It detects the emission of nuclear radiation through the ionization produced in a low-pressure gas in a Geiger–Müller tube. Further improved by
Walther Müller Walther Müller (6 September 1905, in Hanover – 4 December 1979, in Walnut Creek, California) was a German physicist, most well known for his improvement of Hans Geiger's counter for ionizing radiation, now known as the Geiger-Müller tube. ...
. *
Heinrich Geißler Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Geißler (26 May 1814 in Igelshieb – 24 January 1879) was a skilled glassblower and physicist, famous for his invention of the Geissler tube, made of glass and used as a low pressure gas-discharge tube. Geissler desc ...
: Inventor of the
Geissler tube A Geissler tube is an early gas discharge tube used to demonstrate the principles of electrical glow discharge, similar to modern neon lighting. The tube was invented by the German physicist and glassblower Heinrich Geissler in 1857. It cons ...
. *
Reinhard Genzel Reinhard Genzel http://royalsociety.org/people/reinhard-genzel/ Professor Reinhard Genzel ForMemRS (; born 24 March 1952) is a German astrophysicist, co-director of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, a professor at LMU and a ...
: Astrophysicist, he and his group were the first to track the motions of
star A star is an astronomical object comprising a luminous spheroid of plasma (physics), plasma held together by its gravity. The List of nearest stars and brown dwarfs, nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked ...
s at the centre of the
Milky Way The Milky Way is the galaxy that includes our Solar System, with the name describing the galaxy's appearance from Earth: a hazy band of light seen in the night sky formed from stars that cannot be individually distinguished by the naked eye ...
and show that they were orbiting a very massive object, probably a supermassive
black hole A black hole is a region of spacetime where gravitation, gravity is so strong that nothing, including light or other Electromagnetic radiation, electromagnetic waves, has enough energy to escape it. The theory of general relativity predicts t ...
. *
Walter Gerlach Walther Gerlach (1 August 1889 – 10 August 1979) was a German physicist who co-discovered, through laboratory experiment, spin quantization in a magnetic field, the Stern–Gerlach effect. The experiment was conceived by Otto Stern in 1921 an ...
: Physicist who co-discovered spin quantization in a magnetic field, the Stern–Gerlach effect. *
Edmund Germer Edmund Germer (August 24, 1901 – August 10, 1987) was a German inventor, recognized as the father of the fluorescent lamp. His father was an accountant. He obtained a doctorate from the University of Berlin in lighting technology. He appli ...
: Inventor of the neon lamp (Neonlampe). *
Max Giese Max Giese (1879 – 1935) was a German engineer and inventor. Life In 1927, the disadvantages of using a conventional pouring tower led engineers Max Giese and Fritz Hell to the idea of pumping concrete from a concrete mixer directly to t ...
: Inventor of the first
concrete pump A concrete pump is a machine used for transferring liquid concrete by pumping. There are different types of concrete pumps. A common type of concrete pump for large scale construction projects is known as a boom concrete pump, because it uses ...
in 1928. *
Heinrich Göbel Heinrich Göbel, or Henry Goebel (April 20, 1818 – December 4, 1893) was a German-born American precision mechanic and inventor. In 1848 he emigrated to New York City, where he resided until his death. He received American citizenship in 1865. ...
: Inventor of Hemmer for Sewing Machines, 1865, Vacuum Pump (Improvement of the Geissler-System of vacuum pumps, 1881 and Electric Incandescent Lamp (sockets to connect the filament of carbon and the conducting wires), 1882 *
Kurt Gödel Kurt Friedrich Gödel ( , ; April 28, 1906 – January 14, 1978) was a logician, mathematician, and philosopher. Considered along with Aristotle and Gottlob Frege to be one of the most significant logicians in history, Gödel had an imme ...
: Important discoveries in math and logic, such as the
incompleteness theorem Complete may refer to: Logic * Completeness (logic) * Completeness of a theory, the property of a theory that every formula in the theory's language or its negation is provable Mathematics * The completeness of the real numbers, which implies t ...
s *
Maria Goeppert-Mayer Maria Goeppert Mayer (; June 28, 1906 – February 20, 1972) was a German-born American theoretical physicist, and Nobel laureate in Physics for proposing the nuclear shell model of the atomic nucleus. She was the second woman to win a Nobel Pri ...
: Physicist. Nobel laureate in Physics 1963 for proposing the nuclear shell model of the atomic nucleus together with
J. Hans D. Jensen Johannes Hans Daniel Jensen (; 25 June 1907 – 11 February 1973) was a German nuclear physicist. During World War II, he worked on the German nuclear energy project, known as the Uranium Club, where he contributed to the separation of uranium is ...
. The unit for the
two-photon absorption Two-photon absorption (TPA or 2PA) or two-photon excitation or non-linear absorption is the simultaneous absorption of two photons of identical or different frequencies in order to excite a molecule from one state (usually the ground state) to a hi ...
cross section is named the Goeppert-Mayer (GM) unit. *
Konrad Grebe Konrad Grebe (7 June 1907 – 12 July 1972) was a German mining engineer and inventor. Life He worked as a mining engineer in Ibbenbüren for German company Preussag TUI Group is a German leisure, travel and tourism company. TUI is an ...
:
Coal Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal is formed when dea ...
-machine (''Kohlenhobel'') *
Heinrich Greinacher Heinrich Greinacher (May 31, 1880 in St. Gallen – April 17, 1974 in Bern) was a Swiss physicist. He is regarded as an original experimenter and is the developer of the magnetron and the Greinacher multiplier. Greinacher was the only child of ...
: German-Swiss physicist. He is regarded as an original experimenter and is the developer of the magnetron and the Greinacher multiplier; Cockcroft-Walton-Generator in 1914. *
Brothers Grimm The Brothers Grimm ( or ), Jacob (1785–1863) and Wilhelm (1786–1859), were a brother duo of German academics, philologists, cultural researchers, lexicographers, and authors who together collected and published folklore. They are among the ...
: Academic pioneers of philology,
linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...
, and storytelling. Worked together on the most comprehensive dictionary of the German language Deutsches Wörterbuch.
Jacob Grimm Jacob Ludwig Karl Grimm (4 January 1785 – 20 September 1863), also known as Ludwig Karl, was a German author, linguist, philologist, jurist, and folklorist. He is known as the discoverer of Grimm's law of linguistics, the co-author of th ...
: Philologist and linguist. Described first what is now known as
Grimm's law Grimm's law (also known as the First Germanic Sound Shift) is a set of sound laws describing the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) stop consonants as they developed in Proto-Germanic in the 1st millennium BC. First systematically put forward by Jacob Gr ...
, the first scientific research into
sound change A sound change, in historical linguistics, is a change in the pronunciation of a language. A sound change can involve the replacement of one speech sound (or, more generally, one phonetic feature value) by a different one (called phonetic chang ...
in 1822. * Georg Friedrich Grotefend: Deciphering of
cuneiform Cuneiform is a logo-syllabic script that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Middle East. The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era. It is named for the characteristic wedge-sha ...
* Alexander Grothendieck: Mathematician and the central figure behind the creation of the modern theory of
algebraic geometry Algebraic geometry is a branch of mathematics, classically studying zeros of multivariate polynomials. Modern algebraic geometry is based on the use of abstract algebraic techniques, mainly from commutative algebra, for solving geometrical ...
;
Fields Medal The Fields Medal is a prize awarded to two, three, or four mathematicians under 40 years of age at the International Congress of the International Mathematical Union (IMU), a meeting that takes place every four years. The name of the award ho ...
ist (1966). *
Helmut Gröttrup Helmut Gröttrup (12 February 1916 – 4 July 1981) was a German engineer, rocket scientist and inventor of the smart card. During World War II, he worked in the German V-2 rocket program under Wernher von Braun. From 1946 to 1950 he headed a grou ...
:
smart card A smart card, chip card, or integrated circuit card (ICC or IC card) is a physical electronic authentication device, used to control access to a resource. It is typically a plastic credit card-sized card with an embedded integrated circuit (IC) c ...
(together with
Jürgen Dethloff Jürgen Dethloff (12 May 1924 in Stettin – 31 December 2002) was a German inventor and engineer. Achievements Together with German inventor Helmut Gröttrup he invented the smart card (chip card). A successor of the original chip i ...
) *
Walter Gropius Walter Adolph Georg Gropius (18 May 1883 – 5 July 1969) was a German-American architect An architect is a person who plans, designs and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in conne ...
: Pioneer of modern architecture. Founder of the
Bauhaus The Staatliches Bauhaus (), commonly known as the Bauhaus (), was a German art school operational from 1919 to 1933 that combined crafts and the fine arts.Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 4th edn., 200 ...
. First modern industrial building designed in 1910. *
Peter Grünberg Peter Andreas Grünberg (; 18 May 1939 – 7 April 2018) was a German physicist, and Nobel Prize in Physics laureate for his discovery with Albert Fert of giant magnetoresistance which brought about a breakthrough in gigabyte hard disk d ...
: Physicist. Discovered
giant magnetoresistance Giant magnetoresistance (GMR) is a quantum mechanical magnetoresistance effect observed in multilayers composed of alternating ferromagnetic and non-magnetic conductive layers. The 2007 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Albert Fert and Peter G ...
with
Albert Fert Albert Fert (; born 7 March 1938) is a French physicist and one of the discoverers of giant magnetoresistance which brought about a breakthrough in gigabyte hard disks. Currently, he is an emeritus professor at Paris-Saclay University in Orsay, ...
. The discovery is used in gigabyte hard disk drives for computers. Nobel laureate 2007. *
Heinz Guderian Heinz Wilhelm Guderian (; 17 June 1888 – 14 May 1954) was a German general during World War II who, after the war, became a successful memoirist. An early pioneer and advocate of the " blitzkrieg" approach, he played a central role in t ...
: The father of modern mechanized warfare, inventor of the Blitzkrieg strategy. *
Otto von Guericke Otto von Guericke ( , , ; spelled Gericke until 1666; November 20, 1602 – May 11, 1686 ; November 30, 1602 – May 21, 1686 ) was a German scientist, inventor, and politician. His pioneering scientific work, the development of experimental me ...
: Groundbreaking research into air pressure. Invented the
vacuum pump A vacuum pump is a device that draws gas molecules from a sealed volume in order to leave behind a partial vacuum. The job of a vacuum pump is to generate a relative vacuum within a capacity. The first vacuum pump was invented in 1650 by Otto v ...
in 1650. *
Beno Gutenberg Beno Gutenberg (; June 4, 1889 – January 25, 1960) was a German-American seismologist who made several important contributions to the science. He was a colleague and mentor of Charles Francis Richter at the California Institute of Technolog ...
: Together with American Charles Francis Richter he invented
Richter magnitude scale The Richter scale —also called the Richter magnitude scale, Richter's magnitude scale, and the Gutenberg–Richter scale—is a measure of the strength of earthquakes, developed by Charles Francis Richter and presented in his landmark 1935 ...
. *
Johannes Gutenberg Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg (; – 3 February 1468) was a German inventor and Artisan, craftsman who introduced letterpress printing to Europe with his movable type, movable-type printing press. Though not the first of its ki ...
: Inventor of the technology of printing with movable type in 1439. The first book so printed was the
Gutenberg Bible The Gutenberg Bible (also known as the 42-line Bible, the Mazarin Bible or the B42) was the earliest major book printed using mass-produced movable metal type in Europe. It marked the start of the "Gutenberg Revolution" and the age of printed b ...
. *
Aristid von Grosse Aristid von Grosse (January 1905 – July 21, 1985) was a German nuclear chemist. During his work with Otto Hahn, he got access to waste material from radium production, and with this starting material he was able in 1927 to isolate protact ...
: He was able to isolate protactinium oxide and was later able to produce metallic
protactinium Protactinium (formerly protoactinium) is a chemical element with the symbol Pa and atomic number 91. It is a dense, silvery-gray actinide metal which readily reacts with oxygen, water vapor and inorganic acids. It forms various chemical compounds ...
by decomposition of protactinium iodide. *
Johann Rudolf Glauber Johann Rudolf Glauber (10 March 1604 – 16 March 1670) was a German-Dutch alchemist and chemist. Some historians of science have described him as one of the first chemical engineers. His discovery of sodium sulfate in 1625 led to the compou ...
: German-Dutch alchemist who was one of the first
chemical engineer In the field of engineering, a chemical engineer is a professional, equipped with the knowledge of chemical engineering, who works principally in the chemical industry to convert basic raw materials into a variety of products and deals with the ...
s. His discovery of
sodium sulfate Sodium sulfate (also known as sodium sulphate or sulfate of soda) is the inorganic compound with formula Na2SO4 as well as several related hydrates. All forms are white solids that are highly soluble in water. With an annual production of 6 milli ...
in 1625 led to the compound being named after him: "
Glauber's salt Sodium sulfate (also known as sodium sulphate or sulfate of soda) is the inorganic compound with formula Na2SO4 as well as several related hydrates. All forms are white solids that are highly soluble in water. With an annual production of 6 milli ...
".


H

*
Fritz Haber Fritz Haber (; 9 December 186829 January 1934) was a German chemist who received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1918 for his invention of the Haber–Bosch process, a method used in industry to synthesize ammonia from nitrogen gas and hydrogen ...
: German chemist and Nobel laureate who pioneered synthetic ammonia and chemical warfare. *
Theodor W. Hänsch Theodor Wolfgang Hänsch (; born 30 October 1941) is a German physicist. He received one-third of the 2005 Nobel Prize in Physics for "contributions to the development of laser-based precision spectroscopy, including the optical frequency comb t ...
: Physicist, developed laser-based precision spectroscopy further to determine optical frequency extremely accurately. Nobel laureate in 2005. *
Otto Hahn Otto Hahn (; 8 March 1879 – 28 July 1968) was a German chemist who was a pioneer in the fields of radioactivity and radiochemistry. He is referred to as the father of nuclear chemistry and father of nuclear fission. Hahn and Lise Meitner ...
: German chemist and Nobel laureate who pioneered the fields of radioactivity and radiochemistry. Considered to be "the father of nuclear chemistry" and the "founder of the atomic age". Discovered many isotopes,
Protactinium Protactinium (formerly protoactinium) is a chemical element with the symbol Pa and atomic number 91. It is a dense, silvery-gray actinide metal which readily reacts with oxygen, water vapor and inorganic acids. It forms various chemical compounds ...
and
nuclear fission Nuclear fission is a reaction in which the nucleus of an atom splits into two or more smaller nuclei. The fission process often produces gamma photons, and releases a very large amount of energy even by the energetic standards of radio ...
. *
Samuel Hahnemann Christian Friedrich Samuel Hahnemann (; 10 April 1755 – 2 July 1843) was a German physician, best known for creating the pseudoscientific system of alternative medicine called homeopathy. Early life Christian Friedrich Samuel Hahnemann was ...
: Physician, best known for creating a system of alternative medicine called
homeopathy Homeopathy or homoeopathy is a pseudoscientific system of alternative medicine. It was conceived in 1796 by the German physician Samuel Hahnemann. Its practitioners, called homeopaths, believe that a substance that causes symptoms of a dis ...
. *
Harald zur Hausen Harald zur Hausen NAS EASA APS (; born 11 March 1936) is a German virologist and professor emeritus. He has done research on cervical cancer and discovered the role of papilloma viruses in cervical cancer, for which he received the Nobe ...
: Virologist, discovered the role of papilloma viruses in the development of
cervical cancer Cervical cancer is a cancer arising from the cervix. It is due to the abnormal growth of cells that have the ability to invade or spread to other parts of the body. Early on, typically no symptoms are seen. Later symptoms may include abnormal ...
. His research made the development of a vaccine against papilloma possible, which will drastically reduce cervical cancer in future. Nobel laureate as of 2008. *
Werner Heisenberg Werner Karl Heisenberg () (5 December 1901 – 1 February 1976) was a German theoretical physicist and one of the main pioneers of the theory of quantum mechanics. He published his work in 1925 in a breakthrough paper. In the subsequent series ...
: Theoretical physicist who made fundamental contributions to quantum mechanics. Discovered a particle's position and velocity cannot be known at the same time. Discovered atomic nuclei are made of protons and neutrons. *
Wolfgang Helfrich Wolfgang Helfrich (born 25 March 1932) is a German physicist and inventor recognized for his contributions to twisted-nematic liquid crystal technology, which is used to produce a variety of modern LCD electronic displays. Career Helfrich s ...
: Co-inventor of
Twisted nematic field effect The twisted nematic effect (''TN-effect'') was a main technology breakthrough that made LCDs practical. Unlike earlier displays, TN-cells did not require a current to flow for operation and used low operating voltages suitable for use with batter ...
. *
Rudolf Hell Rudolf Hell (19 December 1901 – 11 March 2002) was a German inventor and engineer. Career Hell was born in Eggmühl. From 1919 to 1923, he studied electrical engineering in Munich. He worked there from 1923 to 1929 as assistant of Prof. ...
: Inventor of an early printer and fax machine (
Hellschreiber The Hellschreiber, Feldhellschreiber or Typenbildfeldfernschreiber (also Hell-Schreiber named after its inventor Rudolf Hell) is a facsimile-based teleprinter invented by Rudolf Hell. Compared to contemporary teleprinters that were based on ty ...
). *
Richard Hellmann Richard Hellmann (born June 22, 1876, in Schönebegk, Prussia, now Vetschau, Germany; died February 3, 1971, in New York City) was a German businessman who founded Hellmann's. Life In 1903, Richard Hellmann emigrated from Vetschau, Germany, to ...
: Hellmann's (Blue Ribbon) Mayonnaise, 1905. *
Hermann von Helmholtz Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz (31 August 1821 – 8 September 1894) was a German physicist and physician who made significant contributions in several scientific fields, particularly hydrodynamic stability. The Helmholtz Association, ...
: Discovered the principle of conservation of energy. *
Peter Henlein Peter Henlein (also spelled Henle or Hele) (1485 - August 1542), a locksmith and clockmaker of Nuremberg, Germany, is often considered the inventor of the watch., p.31 He was one of the first craftsmen to make small ornamental portable clocks wh ...
: Inventor of the portable watch. * Friedrich Wilhelm Herschel (William Herschel): Discovered the planet
Uranus Uranus is the seventh planet from the Sun. Its name is a reference to the Greek god of the sky, Uranus (mythology), Uranus (Caelus), who, according to Greek mythology, was the great-grandfather of Ares (Mars (mythology), Mars), grandfather ...
and
infrared radiation Infrared (IR), sometimes called infrared light, is electromagnetic radiation (EMR) with wavelengths longer than those of visible light. It is therefore invisible to the human eye. IR is generally understood to encompass wavelengths from around ...
among other things. *
Heinrich Hertz Heinrich Rudolf Hertz ( ; ; 22 February 1857 – 1 January 1894) was a German physicist who first conclusively proved the existence of the electromagnetic waves predicted by James Clerk Maxwell's Maxwell's equations, equations of electrom ...
: Physicist, Discoverer of
electromagnetic In physics, electromagnetism is an interaction that occurs between particles with electric charge. It is the second-strongest of the four fundamental interactions, after the strong force, and it is the dominant force in the interactions of a ...
/
radio waves Radio waves are a type of electromagnetic radiation with the longest wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum, typically with frequencies of 300 gigahertz ( GHz) and below. At 300 GHz, the corresponding wavelength is 1 mm (s ...
. * Otto Herzog: First use of the
Carabiner A carabiner or karabiner () is a specialized type of shackle, a metal loop with a spring-loaded gate used to quickly and reversibly connect components, most notably in safety-critical systems. The word is a shortened form of ''Karabinerhaken' ...
in mountain climbing which substantially enhanced security for mountaineers. *
Victor Francis Hess Victor Franz Hess (; 24 June 188317 December 1964) was an Austrian-American physicist, and Nobel laureate in physics, who discovered cosmic rays. Biography He was born to Vinzenz Hess and Serafine Edle von Grossbauer-Waldstätt, in Waldstein ...
: Discovered
Cosmic rays Cosmic rays are high-energy particles or clusters of particles (primarily represented by protons or atomic nuclei) that move through space at nearly the speed of light. They originate from the Sun, from outside of the Solar System in our own ...
. Also won the
Nobel Prize The Nobel Prizes ( ; sv, Nobelpriset ; no, Nobelprisen ) are five separate prizes that, according to Alfred Nobel's will of 1895, are awarded to "those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind." Alfr ...
. *
David Hilbert David Hilbert (; ; 23 January 1862 – 14 February 1943) was a German mathematician, one of the most influential mathematicians of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Hilbert discovered and developed a broad range of fundamental ideas in many a ...
: Influential mathematician who discovered and developed a broad range of fundamental ideas in math. *
Albert Hofmann Albert Hofmann (11 January 1906 – 29 April 2008) was a Swiss chemist known for being the first to synthesize, ingest, and learn of the psychedelic effects of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD). Hofmann's team also isolated, named and synthesi ...
: German-Swiss; Discovered the chemical properties of
chitin Chitin ( C8 H13 O5 N)n ( ) is a long-chain polymer of ''N''-acetylglucosamine, an amide derivative of glucose. Chitin is probably the second most abundant polysaccharide in nature (behind only cellulose); an estimated 1 billion tons of chit ...
and
lysergic acid diethylamide Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), also known colloquially as acid, is a potent psychedelic drug. Effects typically include intensified thoughts, emotions, and sensory perception. At sufficiently high dosages LSD manifests primarily mental, vi ...
. *
Wilhelm Hofmeister Wilhelm Friedrich Benedikt Hofmeister (18 May 1824 – 12 January 1877) was a German biologist and botanist. He "stands as one of the true giants in the history of biology and belongs in the same pantheon as Darwin and Mendel." He was lar ...
: Discovery of the
Alternation of generations Alternation of generations (also known as metagenesis or heterogenesis) is the predominant type of Biological life cycle, life cycle in plants and algae. It consists of a Multicellular organism, multicellular haploid sexual phase, the gametophy ...
* Felix Hoffmann: Isolated acetylsalicylic acid, a painkiller marketed under the name Aspirin (Bayer), 1897. In some English speaking countries marketed under the name disprin. *
Herman Hollerith Herman Hollerith (February 29, 1860 – November 17, 1929) was a German-American statistician, inventor, and businessman who developed an electromechanical tabulating machine for punched cards to assist in summarizing information and, later, i ...
: a
German American German Americans (german: Deutschamerikaner, ) are Americans who have full or partial German ancestry. With an estimated size of approximately 43 million in 2019, German Americans are the largest of the self-reported ancestry groups by the Unite ...
statistician who developed a mechanical tabulator based on punched cards *
Gottlob Honold 220px, Gottlob Honold 1910 Gottlob Honold (26 August 1876 – 17 March 1923) was the leading engineer in the workshop of Robert Bosch and, with Bosch, was the inventor of the spark plug and the modern internal combustion engine, as well as headli ...
: Inventor of the spark plug and the modern internal combustion engine, as well as headlights. * Horten brothers: Designed some of the most advanced aircraft of the 1930s and '40s, including the world's first jet-powered flying wing, the
Horten Ho 229 The Horten H.IX, RLM designation Ho 229 (or Gotha Go 229 for extensive re-design work done by Gotha to prepare the aircraft for mass production) was a German prototype fighter/bomber initially designed by Reimar and Walter Horten to be built ...
. * Christian Hülsmeyer: German inventor of the ''Telemobilskop'', a radio-based detector of remote objects; a 1904 precursor of
radar Radar is a detection system that uses radio waves to determine the distance (''ranging''), angle, and radial velocity of objects relative to the site. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, w ...
. *
Alexander von Humboldt Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt (14 September 17696 May 1859) was a German polymath, geographer, naturalist, explorer, and proponent of Romantic philosophy and science. He was the younger brother of the Prussian minister, p ...
: Naturalist and explorer. His quantitative work on botanical geography was foundational to the field of biogeography. *
Wilhelm von Humboldt Friedrich Wilhelm Christian Karl Ferdinand von Humboldt (, also , ; ; 22 June 1767 – 8 April 1835) was a Prussian philosopher, linguist, government functionary, diplomat, and founder of the Humboldt University of Berlin, which was named after ...
: Originator of the
linguistic relativity The hypothesis of linguistic relativity, also known as the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis , the Whorf hypothesis, or Whorfianism, is a principle suggesting that the structure of a language affects its speakers' world view, worldview or cognition, and ...
hypothesis. * Erich Huzenlaub: Huzenlaub Process for parboiling * Johannes Heidenhain: Invented the Metallur process. This lead-sulfide copying process made it possible for the first time to make exact copies of an original grating on a metal surface for industrial use. By 1943, Heidenhain was producing linear scales with accuracy of ± 15 µm and circular scale disks with accuracy of ± 3 angular seconds. * Karl Andreas Hofmann: German inorganic chemist who is best known for his discovery of a family of clathrates which consist of a 2-D metal cyanide sheet, with every second metal also bound axially to two other ligands. These materials have been named 'Hofmann clathrates' in his honour.


I

*
Ernst Ising Ernst Ising (; May 10, 1900 in Cologne, Germany – May 11, 1998 in Peoria, Illinois, USA) was a German physicist, who is best remembered for the development of the Ising model. He was a professor of physics at Bradley University until his r ...
: physicist who developed
Ising model The Ising model () (or Lenz-Ising model or Ising-Lenz model), named after the physicists Ernst Ising and Wilhelm Lenz, is a mathematical model of ferromagnetism in statistical mechanics. The model consists of discrete variables that represent ...
. *
Otmar Issing Otmar Issing (born 27 March 1936 in Würzburg) is a German economist who served as a member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank from 1998 to 2006 and concurrently as ECB chief economist. He developed the 'two-pillar' approach to ...
: Economist who invented the "pepet pillar" decision algorithm now used by the ECB.


J

*
J. Hans D. Jensen Johannes Hans Daniel Jensen (; 25 June 1907 – 11 February 1973) was a German nuclear physicist. During World War II, he worked on the German nuclear energy project, known as the Uranium Club, where he contributed to the separation of uranium is ...
: Nuclear physicist, proposed the
nuclear shell model In nuclear physics, atomic physics, and nuclear chemistry, the nuclear shell model is a model of the atomic nucleus which uses the Pauli exclusion principle to describe the structure of the nucleus in terms of energy levels. The first shell m ...
, shared 1963 Nobel Prize in Physics. *
Hugo Junkers Hugo Junkers (3 February 1859 – 3 February 1935) was a German aircraft engineer and aircraft designer who pioneered the design of all-metal airplanes and flying wings. His company, Junkers Flugzeug- und Motorenwerke AG (Junkers Aircraft and ...
: Pioneer of all-metal aircraft construction with the
Junkers J 1 The Junkers J 1, nicknamed the ''Blechesel'' ("Tin Donkey" or "Sheet Metal Donkey"), was an experimental monoplane aircraft developed by Junkers & Co. It was the world's first all-metal aircraft. Manufactured early on in the First World War, ...
(1915–16).


K

* Ferdinand Adolf Kehrer : Introduction of the transverse incision technique to minimize bleeding by modern
Caesarean section Caesarean section, also known as C-section or caesarean delivery, is the surgical procedure by which one or more babies are delivered through an incision in the mother's abdomen, often performed because vaginal delivery would put the baby or mo ...
* Donald J. Kessler: Astrophysicist, known for developing the
Kessler syndrome The Kessler syndrome (also called the Kessler effect, collisional cascading, or ablation cascade), proposed by NASA scientist Donald J. Kessler in 1978, is a scenario in which the density of objects in low Earth orbit (LEO) due to space pollutio ...
. *
Hermann Kemper Hermann Kemper (5 April 1892 in Nortrup – 13 July 1977) was a German engineer and pioneer in magnetic levitation. Herman Kemper began his research on magnetic levitation in 1922. In 1933, Kemper constructed a working circuit for hovering on ...
: Invented the magnetic levitation train. Patent granted in 1934. *
Johannes Kepler Johannes Kepler (; ; 27 December 1571 – 15 November 1630) was a German astronomer, mathematician, astrologer, natural philosopher and writer on music. He is a key figure in the 17th-century Scientific Revolution, best known for his laws ...
: Discovered the laws of planetary motion. *
Wolfgang Ketterle Wolfgang Ketterle (; born 21 October 1957) is a German physicist and professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). His research has focused on experiments that trap and cool atoms to temperatures close to absolute ze ...
: German-American physicist who developed an "atom laser", amongst other breakthroughs. Nobel laureate 2001. * Erhard Kietz: Pioneer discoverer of video technology. *
Gustav Kirchhoff Gustav Robert Kirchhoff (; 12 March 1824 – 17 October 1887) was a German physicist who contributed to the fundamental understanding of electrical circuits, spectroscopy, and the emission of black-body radiation by heated objects. He ...
: Discovery of the principles upon which
spectroscopy Spectroscopy is the field of study that measures and interprets the electromagnetic spectra that result from the interaction between electromagnetic radiation and matter as a function of the wavelength or frequency of the radiation. Matter wa ...
is founded. He contributed to the fundamental understanding of
electrical circuit An electrical network is an interconnection of electrical components (e.g., batteries, resistors, inductors, capacitors, switches, transistors) or a model of such an interconnection, consisting of electrical elements (e.g., voltage sources, ...
s,
spectroscopy Spectroscopy is the field of study that measures and interprets the electromagnetic spectra that result from the interaction between electromagnetic radiation and matter as a function of the wavelength or frequency of the radiation. Matter wa ...
, and the emission of
black-body A black body or blackbody is an idealized physical body that absorbs all incident electromagnetic radiation, regardless of frequency or angle of incidence. The name "black body" is given because it absorbs all colors of light. A black body ...
radiation In physics, radiation is the emission or transmission of energy in the form of waves or particles through space or through a material medium. This includes: * ''electromagnetic radiation'', such as radio waves, microwaves, infrared, visi ...
by heated objects. He coined the term "black body" radiation in 1862, and two different sets of concepts (one in circuit theory, and one in spectroscopy) are named " Kirchhoff's laws" after him; there is also a Kirchhoff's Law in
thermochemistry Thermochemistry is the study of the heat energy which is associated with chemical reactions and/or phase changes such as melting and boiling. A reaction may release or absorb energy, and a phase change may do the same. Thermochemistry focuses on ...
. The
Bunsen–Kirchhoff Award The Bunsen–Kirchhoff Award is a prize for "outstanding achievements" in the field of analytical spectroscopy. It has been awarded since 1990 by the German Working Group for Applied Spectroscopy, and is endowed with by PerkinElmer, Germany. The ...
for spectroscopy is named after him and his colleague,
Robert Bunsen Robert Wilhelm Eberhard Bunsen (; 30 March 1811 – 16 August 1899) was a German chemist. He investigated emission spectra of heated elements, and discovered caesium (in 1860) and rubidium (in 1861) with the physicist Gustav Kirchhoff. The Bu ...
, who both invented the
spectrometer A spectrometer () is a scientific instrument used to separate and measure spectral components of a physical phenomenon. Spectrometer is a broad term often used to describe instruments that measure a continuous variable of a phenomenon where the ...
in 1859. *
Martin Heinrich Klaproth Martin Heinrich Klaproth (1 December 1743 – 1 January 1817) was a German chemist. He trained and worked for much of his life as an apothecary, moving in later life to the university. His shop became the second-largest apothecary in Berlin, and ...
: Discovered the element
Uranium Uranium is a chemical element with the symbol U and atomic number 92. It is a silvery-grey metal in the actinide series of the periodic table. A uranium atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons, of which 6 are valence electrons. Uranium is weak ...
. *
Klaus von Klitzing Klaus von Klitzing (, born 28 June 1943, Schroda) is a German physicist, known for discovery of the integer quantum Hall effect, for which he was awarded the 1985 Nobel Prize in Physics. Education In 1962, Klitzing passed the Abitur at the A ...
:
Physicist A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate caus ...
, known for discovery of the integer
quantum Hall effect The quantum Hall effect (or integer quantum Hall effect) is a quantized version of the Hall effect which is observed in two-dimensional electron systems subjected to low temperatures and strong magnetic fields, in which the Hall resistance exh ...
, 1985 Nobel Prize in Physics. *
Ludwig Knorr Ludwig Knorr (2 December 1859 – 4 June 1921) was a German chemist. Together with Carl Paal, he discovered the Paal–Knorr synthesis, and the Knorr quinoline synthesis and Knorr pyrrole synthesis are also named after him. The synthesis in 18 ...
: Chemist, who together with Carl Paal, discovered the Paal-Knorr synthesis, and the Knorr quinoline synthesis and
Knorr pyrrole synthesis The Knorr pyrrole synthesis is a widely used chemical reaction that synthesizes substituted pyrroles (3). The method involves the reaction of an α-amino-ketone (1) and a compound containing an electron-withdrawing group (e.g. an ester as shown) ...
. *
Robert Koch Heinrich Hermann Robert Koch ( , ; 11 December 1843 – 27 May 1910) was a German physician and microbiologist. As the discoverer of the specific causative agents of deadly infectious diseases including tuberculosis, cholera (though the Vibrio ...
: Physician, discoverer, inventor and Nobel Prize winner. He became famous for isolating ''Bacillus anthracis'' (1877), the tuberculosis bacillus (1882), and ''Vibrio cholerae'' (1883), and for his development of Koch's postulates. *
Friedrich Koenig Friedrich Gottlob Koenig (17 April 1774 – 17 January 1833) was a German inventor best known for his high-speed steam-powered printing press, which he built together with watchmaker Andreas Friedrich Bauer. This new style of printing press ...
: first functional steam-powered
printing press A printing press is a mechanical device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a printing, print medium (such as paper or cloth), thereby transferring the ink. It marked a dramatic improvement on earlier printing methods in wh ...
with his colleague
Andreas Friedrich Bauer Andreas Friedrich Bauer (18 August 1783 – 27 December 1860) was a Germans, German engineer who developed the first functional steam-powered printing press with his colleague Friedrich Koenig, who had invented the technology and sold it to ''The ...
) * Alfred Körte and
Gustav Körte Gustav Körte (8 February 1852 – 15 August 1917) was a German classical archaeologist. He was the brother of philologist Alfred Körte (1866–1946) and surgeon Werner Körte (1853–1937). Körte was born in Berlin. He studied classical philol ...
: discovered
Gordium Gordion ( Phrygian: ; el, Γόρδιον, translit=Górdion; tr, Gordion or ; la, Gordium) was the capital city of ancient Phrygia. It was located at the site of modern Yassıhüyük, about southwest of Ankara (capital of Turkey), in the ...
, 1900 *
Franz Kolb Franz Kolb ( fl. 1880s) was a German pharmacist and the inventor of the modeling paste Plastilin. In English-speaking countries this material is also known as "plasticine." Because of different patent rights in Germany and England there are dif ...
:
Plasticine Plasticine is a putty-like modelling material made from calcium salts, petroleum jelly and aliphatic acids. Though originally a brand name for the British version of the product, it is now applied generically in English as a product category ...
* Arthur Korn: Inventor involved in development of the fax machine, specifically the transmission of photographs or telephotography, known as the Bildtelegraph. *
Albrecht Kossel Ludwig Karl Martin Leonhard Albrecht Kossel (; 16 September 1853 – 5 July 1927) was a German biochemist and pioneer in the study of genetics. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1910 for his work in determining the ch ...
: determining the chemical composition of
nucleic acid Nucleic acids are biopolymers, macromolecules, essential to all known forms of life. They are composed of nucleotides, which are the monomers made of three components: a 5-carbon sugar, a phosphate group and a nitrogenous base. The two main cl ...
s *
Max Kramer Dr. Max Otto Kramer (8 September 1903 – June 1986) was a German scientist who worked for the Ruhrstahl AG steel and armaments corporation. He was responsible for the construction of the Fritz X and the Ruhrstahl X-4 missiles (1943-1945), amo ...
: Aircraft engineer. Developed the first operational guided bomb in 1942/43. This first
smart bomb Smart or SMART may refer to: Arts and entertainment * ''Smart'' (Hey! Say! JUMP album), 2014 * Smart (Hotels.com), former mascot of Hotels.com * ''Smart'' (Sleeper album), 1995 debut album by Sleeper * ''SMart'', a children's television ser ...
was radio controlled and joy-stick operated. *
Hans Adolf Krebs Sir Hans Adolf Krebs, FRS (, ; 25 August 1900 – 22 November 1981) was a German-born British biologist, physician and biochemist. He was a pioneer scientist in the study of cellular respiration, a biochemical process in living cells that ex ...
: discovered two important chemical reactions in the body, namely the
urea cycle The urea cycle (also known as the ornithine cycle) is a cycle of Biochemistry, biochemical reactions that produces urea (NH2)2CO from ammonia (NH3). Animals that use this cycle, mainly amphibians and mammals, are called ureotelic. The urea cycle ...
and the
citric acid cycle The citric acid cycle (CAC)—also known as the Krebs cycle or the TCA cycle (tricarboxylic acid cycle)—is a series of chemical reactions to release stored energy through the oxidation of acetyl-CoA derived from carbohydrates, fats, and proteins ...
. *
Wilhelm Krische Wilhelm may refer to: People and fictional characters * William Charles John Pitcher, costume designer known professionally as "Wilhelm" * Wilhelm (name), a list of people and fictional characters with the given name or surname Other uses * Mount ...
:
Galalith Galalith (Erinoid in the United Kingdom) is a synthetic plastic material manufactured by the interaction of casein and formaldehyde. The commercial name is derived from the Ancient Greek words (, "milk") and (, "stone"). It is odourless, insol ...
*
Julius H. Kroehl Julius Hermann Kroehl (in German, ''Kröhl'') (1820 – September 9, 1867) was a German American inventor and engineer. He invented and built the first submarine able to dive and resurface on its own, the Sub Marine Explorer, technically adv ...
: Inventor and engineer, who built the first functioning submarine in the world. *
Herbert Kroemer Herbert Kroemer (; born August 25, 1928) is a German-American physicist who, along with Zhores Alferov, received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2000 for "developing semiconductor heterostructures used in high-speed- and opto-electronics". Kroemer ...
: Physicist, shared the Nobel Prize in Physics 2000 for developing semiconductor heterostructures used in high-speed- and opto-electronics. * Werner Krüger: Developed the Krueger flap, a lift enhancement device in modern aircraft wings in 1943. *
Alfred Krupp Alfred Krupp (born ''Alfried Felix Alwyn Krupp''; Essen, 26 April 1812 – Essen, 14 July 1887) was a German steel manufacturer and inventor; the largest arms supplier of his era, which earned him the nickname "The Cannon King". Biography Alf ...
: Pioneer in metal casting and metal working process and procedures. *
Adam Johann von Krusenstern Adam Johann von Krusenstern (also Krusenstjerna in Swedish; russian: Ива́н Фёдорович Крузенште́рн, tr. ; 10 October 177012 August 1846) was a Russian admiral and explorer, who led the first Russian circumnavigatio ...
: Navigator and explorer, led the first Russian expedition to circumnavigate the earth. *
Dietrich Küchemann Dietrich Küchemann CBE FRS FRAeS (11 September 1911 – 23 February 1976) was a German aerodynamicist who made several important contributions to the advancement of high-speed flight. He spent most of his career in the UK, where he is ...
: Aeronautical pioneer, developed wings for supersonic speed, such as
delta wing A delta wing is a wing shaped in the form of a triangle. It is named for its similarity in shape to the Greek uppercase letter delta (Δ). Although long studied, it did not find significant applications until the Jet Age, when it proved suitabl ...
s as used in the
Concorde The Aérospatiale/BAC Concorde () is a retired Franco-British supersonic airliner jointly developed and manufactured by Sud Aviation (later Aérospatiale) and the British Aircraft Corporation (BAC). Studies started in 1954, and France an ...
. *
Heinz Kunert Heinz Kunert (25 March 1927, Sarnów, Gliwice County – 6 April 2012) was a German engineer and inventor. Life Kunert studied philosophy, physics and psychology at University of Bonn. Kunert invented the first rear defogger A defogger, de ...
:
Defogger A defogger, demister, or defroster is a system to clear condensation and thaw frost from the windshield, backglass, or side windows of a motor vehicle. The rear window defroster was invented by German automobile engineer Heinz Kunert. Types ...
for automobiles. *
Felix Klein Christian Felix Klein (; 25 April 1849 – 22 June 1925) was a German mathematician and mathematics educator, known for his work with group theory, complex analysis, non-Euclidean geometry, and on the associations between geometry and group ...
: Invented the
Erlangen Program In mathematics, the Erlangen program is a method of characterizing geometries based on group theory and projective geometry. It was published by Felix Klein in 1872 as ''Vergleichende Betrachtungen über neuere geometrische Forschungen.'' It is nam ...
, classifying geometries by their underlying
symmetry group In group theory, the symmetry group of a geometric object is the group of all transformations under which the object is invariant, endowed with the group operation of composition. Such a transformation is an invertible mapping of the ambient ...
s, was a highly influential synthesis of much of the mathematics of the day. Also invented the
Klein bottle In topology, a branch of mathematics, the Klein bottle () is an example of a non-orientable surface; it is a two-dimensional manifold against which a system for determining a normal vector cannot be consistently defined. Informally, it is a o ...
, Beltrami-Klein model and wrote
Klein's encyclopedia Felix Klein's ''Encyclopedia of Mathematical Sciences'' is a German mathematical encyclopedia published in six volumes from 1898 to 1933. Klein and Wilhelm Franz Meyer were organizers of the encyclopedia. Its full title in English is ''Encycloped ...
.


L

* Albert Ladenburg: isolated
hyoscine Scopolamine, also known as hyoscine, or Devil's Breath, is a natural or synthetically produced tropane alkaloid and anticholinergic drug that is formally used as a medication for treating motion sickness and postoperative nausea and vomiti ...
*
Eugen Langen Carl Eugen Langen (9 October 1833 in Cologne – 2 October 1895 in Elsdorf) was a German entrepreneur, engineer and inventor, involved in the development of the petrol engine and the Wuppertal Suspension Railway. In 1857 he worked in his father' ...
: Entrepreneur, engineer and inventor, involved in the development of the petrol engine and the Wuppertal monorail. *
Paul Langerhans Paul Langerhans (25 July 1847 – 20 July 1888) was a German pathologist, physiologist and biologist, credited with the discovery of the cells that secrete insulin, named after him as the islets of Langerhans. Eponymous terms * Islets of Langerh ...
:
Islets of Langerhans The pancreatic islets or islets of Langerhans are the regions of the pancreas that contain its endocrine (hormone-producing) cells, discovered in 1869 by German pathological anatomist Paul Langerhans. The pancreatic islets constitute 1–2% of ...
,
Langerhans cells A Langerhans cell (LC) is a tissue-resident macrophage of the skin. These cells contain organelles called Birbeck granules. They are present in all layers of the epidermis and are most prominent in the stratum spinosum. They also occur in t ...
*
Max von Laue Max Theodor Felix von Laue (; 9 October 1879 – 24 April 1960) was a German physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1914 for his discovery of the diffraction of X-rays by crystals. In addition to his scientific endeavors with cont ...
: Discoveries regarding the diffraction of X-rays in crystals. * Ernst Lecher: He is remembered for developing an apparatus— "Lecher lines"—to measure the wavelength and frequency of electromagnetic waves. *
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Gottfried Wilhelm (von) Leibniz . ( – 14 November 1716) was a German polymath active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist and diplomat. He is one of the most prominent figures in both the history of philosophy and the history of mathema ...
: Philosopher known for discovering the mathematical field of calculus and coherently laying down its basic operations in 1684. The modern binary number system, the basis for binary code, was invented by Gottfried Leibniz in 1679 and appears in his article Explication de l'Arithmétique Binaire. *
Emil Lerp Emil Lerp (1 January 1886 – 1 January 1966) was a German businessman and inventor of the first mass produced transportable gasoline chainsaw. Career Lerp was born in Goldbach, Saxe-Coburg and Gotha in 1886. In 1927, he invented the transport ...
: inventor of transportable gasoline
chainsaw A chainsaw (or chain saw) is a portable gasoline-, electric-, or battery-powered saw that cuts with a set of teeth attached to a rotating chain driven along a guide bar. It is used in activities such as tree felling, limbing, bucking, pru ...
, 1927 *
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1 July 1742 – 24 February 1799) was a German physicist, satirist, and Anglophile. As a scientist, he was the first to hold a professorship explicitly dedicated to experimental physics in Germany. He is remembered for ...
: German scientist credited with the development of the
electrophorus In electromagnetism, an electrophorus or electrophore is a simple, manual, capacitive, electrostatic generator used to produce charge via the process of electrostatic induction. A first version of it was invented in 1762 by Swedish professor Jo ...
. he is remembered for his posthumously published notebooks, which he himself called ''Sudelbücher'', a description modeled on the
English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...
bookkeeping Bookkeeping is the recording of financial transactions, and is part of the process of accounting in business and other organizations. It involves preparing source documents for all transactions, operations, and other events of a business. Tr ...
term "scrapbooks", and for his discovery of the strange tree-like electrical discharge patterns now called
Lichtenberg figure A Lichtenberg figure (German ''Lichtenberg-Figuren''), or Lichtenberg dust figure, is a branching electric discharge that sometimes appears on the surface or in the interior of insulating materials. Lichtenberg figures are often associated wit ...
s. *
Justus von Liebig Justus Freiherr von Liebig (12 May 1803 – 20 April 1873) was a German scientist who made major contributions to agricultural and biological chemistry, and is considered one of the principal founders of organic chemistry. As a professor at t ...
: German chemist who made contributions to agricultural and biological chemistry. *
Otto Lilienthal Karl Wilhelm Otto Lilienthal (23 May 1848 – 10 August 1896) was a German pioneer of aviation who became known as the "flying man". He was the first person to make well-documented, repeated, successful flights with gliders, therefore making ...
: Father of Aviation and first successful aviator. Main discovery was the properties and shape of the
wing A wing is a type of fin that produces lift while moving through air or some other fluid. Accordingly, wings have streamlined cross-sections that are subject to aerodynamic forces and act as airfoils. A wing's aerodynamic efficiency is expres ...
. *
Carl von Linde Carl Paul Gottfried von Linde (11 June 1842 – 16 November 1934) was a German scientist, engineer, and businessman. He discovered a refrigeration cycle and invented the first industrial-scale air separation and gas liquefaction processes, whi ...
: Engineer who, among other things, developed refrigeration and gas separation technologies. *
Alexander Lippisch Alexander Martin Lippisch (November 2, 1894 – February 11, 1976) was a German aeronautical engineer, a pioneer of aerodynamics who made important contributions to the understanding of tailless aircraft, delta wings and the ground effect, and a ...
: Pioneer of aerodynamics, his most famous design is the
Messerschmitt Me 163 The Messerschmitt Me 163 Komet is a rocket-powered interceptor aircraft primarily designed and produced by the German aircraft manufacturer Messerschmitt. It is the only operational rocket-powered fighter aircraft in history as well as ...
. * Ernst Litfaß: free-standing cylindrical
advertising column Advertising columns or Morris columns (french: colonne Morris, german: Litfaßsäule) are cylindrical outdoor sidewalk structures with a characteristic style that are used for advertising and other purposes. They are common throughout Germany inc ...
. *
Friedrich Loeffler Friedrich August Johannes Loeffler (; 24 June 18529 April 1915) was a German bacteriologist at the University of Greifswald. Biography He obtained his M.D. degree from the University of Berlin in 1874. He worked with Robert Koch from 1879 to 1884 ...
: discovered the organism causing diphtheria ( Corynebacterium diphtheriae) and the cause of
foot-and-mouth disease Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) or hoof-and-mouth disease (HMD) is an infectious and sometimes fatal viral disease that affects cloven-hoofed animals, including domestic and wild bovids. The virus causes a high fever lasting two to six days, followe ...
(
Aphthovirus ''Aphthovirus'' (from the Greek -, vesicles in the mouth) is a viral genus of the family ''Picornaviridae''. Aphthoviruses infect split-hooved animals, and include the causative agent of foot-and-mouth disease, ''Foot-and-mouth disease virus'' ...
). His description of the diphtheria bacillus, published in 1884. *
Johann Benedict Listing Johann Benedict Listing (25 July 1808 – 24 December 1882) was a German mathematician. J. B. Listing was born in Frankfurt and died in Göttingen. He first introduced the term "topology" to replace the older term "geometria situs" (also called ...
: German mathematician who was a doctoral student under
Carl Friedrich Gauss Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss (; german: Gauß ; la, Carolus Fridericus Gauss; 30 April 177723 February 1855) was a German mathematician and physicist who made significant contributions to many fields in mathematics and science. Sometimes refer ...
, he first introduced the term "
topology In mathematics, topology (from the Greek language, Greek words , and ) is concerned with the properties of a mathematical object, geometric object that are preserved under Continuous function, continuous Deformation theory, deformations, such ...
", in a famous article published in 1847, although he had used the term in correspondence some years earlier. He (independently) discovered the properties of the half-twisted strip at the same time (1858) as
August Ferdinand Möbius August Ferdinand Möbius (, ; ; 17 November 1790 – 26 September 1868) was a German mathematician and theoretical astronomer. Early life and education Möbius was born in Schulpforta, Electorate of Saxony, and was descended on his ...
, and went further in exploring the properties of strips with higher-order twists (paradromic rings). He discovered topological invariants which came to be called Listing numbers. He also framed the
Listing's law Listing's law, named after German mathematician Johann Benedict Listing (1808–1882), describes the three-dimensional orientation of the eye and its axes of rotation. Listing's law has been shown to hold when the head is stationary and upright and ...
. * Hans Luedtke: German organist, musicologist and inventor who developed “Oskalyd” extended organs and keyboards with hexagonal keys arranged like honeycombs.


M

*
Maria Goeppert-Mayer Maria Goeppert Mayer (; June 28, 1906 – February 20, 1972) was a German-born American theoretical physicist, and Nobel laureate in Physics for proposing the nuclear shell model of the atomic nucleus. She was the second woman to win a Nobel Pri ...
: Maria Goeppert Mayer was a German-born American theoretical physicist, and Nobel laureate in Physics for proposing the nuclear shell model of the atomic nucleus. She was the second woman to win a Nobel Prize in physics, after Marie Curie *
Georg Hans Madelung Georg Hans Madelung (31 July 1889 in Rostock – 17 August 1972 in Uffing) was a German academic and aeronautical engineer. Madelung studied at several German Technical Universities before his service as a pilot in the First World War. After ...
: Academic and aeronautical engineer; a participant in the development of the
Junkers F.13 The Junkers F 13 was the world's first all-metal transport aircraft, developed in Weimar Republic, Germany at the end of World War I. It was an advanced Cantilever#Aircraft, cantilever-wing monoplane, with enclosed accommodation for four passenge ...
. *
Karl Marx Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...
: Political economist and philosopher, who defined the political/economical background of capitalism and discovered the mechanics of
Marxism Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand S ...
. * J. Heinrich Matthaei: Together with Marshall Nirenberg, they show that a sequence of
nucleotide Nucleotides are organic molecules consisting of a nucleoside and a phosphate. They serve as monomeric units of the nucleic acid polymers – deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and ribonucleic acid (RNA), both of which are essential biomolecules wi ...
can encode particular
amino acid Amino acids are organic compounds that contain both amino and carboxylic acid functional groups. Although hundreds of amino acids exist in nature, by far the most important are the alpha-amino acids, which comprise proteins. Only 22 alpha am ...
, laying the foundations for deciphering the
genetic code The genetic code is the set of rules used by living cells to translate information encoded within genetic material ( DNA or RNA sequences of nucleotide triplets, or codons) into proteins. Translation is accomplished by the ribosome, which links ...
. *
Wilhelm Maybach Wilhelm Maybach (; 9 February 1846 – 29 December 1929) was an early German engine designer and industrialist. During the 1890s he was hailed in France, then the world centre for car production, as the "King of Designers". From the late 19th ce ...
: Together with Gottlieb Daimler the first gasoline-powered motorcycle, power-engine boat and later, 1902, the Mercedes car model. * Ottomar von Mayenburg: Inventor of "Chlorodont", the first commercial brand of toothpaste. *
Georg Meissner George Meissner (19 November 1829 – 30 March 1905) was a German anatomist and physiologist born in Hanover. He studied medicine at the University of Göttingen, where he worked closely with Rudolf Wagner (1806–1864). In 1851 he accompa ...
: Discovered
Meissner's plexus The submucosal plexus (Meissner's plexus, plexus of the submucosa, plexus submucosus) lies in the submucosa of the intestinal wall. The nerves of this plexus are derived from the myenteric plexus which itself is derived from the plexuses of parasy ...
. *
Lise Meitner Elise Meitner ( , ; 7 November 1878 – 27 October 1968) was an Austrian-Swedish physicist who was one of those responsible for the discovery of the element protactinium and nuclear fission. While working at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute on rad ...
: Nuclear physicist, who, together with Otto Frisch, provided a theoretical account of nuclear fission. *
Julius Lothar Meyer Julius Lothar Meyer (19 August 1830 – 11 April 1895) was a German chemist. He was one of the pioneers in developing the earliest versions of the periodic table of the chemical elements. Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev (his chief rival) and he ...
: With Mendeleev he developed the periodic classification of the elements in order of their atomic weight. *
Christian Erich Hermann von Meyer Christian Erich Hermann von Meyer (3 September 1801 – 2 April 1869), known as Hermann von Meyer, was a German palaeontologist. He was awarded the 1858 Wollaston medal by the Geological Society of London. Life He was born at Frankfurt am Ma ...
: He discovered the Triassic predator
Teratosaurus ''Teratosaurus'' is a genus of rauisuchians known from the Triassic Stubensandstein (Löwenstein Formation - Norian stage) of Germany. It is estimated to be 6 meters (19.5 ft) long. Discovery In 1860, Sixt Friedrich Jakob von Kapff at th ...
, the earliest bird Archaeopteryx lithographica (1861), the pterosaur
Rhamphorhynchus ''Rhamphorhynchus'' (, from Ancient Greek ''rhamphos'' meaning "beak" and ''rhynchus'' meaning "snout") is a genus of long-tailed pterosaurs in the Jurassic period. Less specialized than contemporary, short-tailed pterodactyloid pterosaurs such ...
, and the prosauropod dinosaur
Plateosaurus ''Plateosaurus'' (probably meaning "broad lizard", often mistranslated as "flat lizard") is a genus of plateosaurid dinosaur that lived during the Late Triassic period, around 214 to 204 million years ago, in what is now Central and Northern Eur ...
*
Gregor Mendel Gregor Johann Mendel, Augustinians, OSA (; cs, Řehoř Jan Mendel; 20 July 1822 – 6 January 1884) was a biologist, meteorologist, mathematician, Augustinians, Augustinian friar and abbot of St Thomas's Abbey, Brno, St. Thomas' Abbey in Br ...
: Discoveries in genetics. Mendel demonstrated that the inheritance of certain traits in pea plants follows particular patterns, now referred to as the laws of
Mendelian inheritance Mendelian inheritance (also known as Mendelism) is a type of biological inheritance following the principles originally proposed by Gregor Mendel in 1865 and 1866, re-discovered in 1900 by Hugo de Vries and Carl Correns, and later popularize ...
. First published in 1865. *
Ottmar Mergenthaler Ottmar Mergenthaler (11 May 1854 – 28 October 1899) was a German-American inventor who has been called a second Gutenberg, as Mergenthaler invented the linotype machine, the first device that could easily and quickly set complete lines of ...
: Inventor who has been called a second Gutenberg because of his invention of the Linotype machine. *
Rudolf Mössbauer Rudolf Ludwig Mössbauer (German spelling: ''Mößbauer''; ; 31 January 1929 – 14 September 2011) was a German physicist best known for his 1957 discovery of ''recoilless nuclear resonance fluorescence'' for which he was awarded the 1961 Nobe ...
: physicist, discovered
Mössbauer effect The Mössbauer effect, or recoilless nuclear resonance fluorescence, is a physical phenomenon discovered by Rudolf Mössbauer in 1958. It involves the resonant and recoil-free emission and absorption of gamma radiation by atomic nuclei bound in ...
, shared Nobel Prize in Physics 1961. *
Johannes Peter Müller Johannes Peter Müller (14 July 1801 – 28 April 1858) was a German physiologist, comparative anatomy, comparative anatomist, ichthyology, ichthyologist, and herpetology, herpetologist, known not only for his discoveries but also for his ability ...
: Discoveries in physiology. *
August Ferdinand Möbius August Ferdinand Möbius (, ; ; 17 November 1790 – 26 September 1868) was a German mathematician and theoretical astronomer. Early life and education Möbius was born in Schulpforta, Electorate of Saxony, and was descended on his ...
: German mathematician and theoretical astronomer. He is best known for his discovery of the Möbius strip, independently discovered by
Johann Benedict Listing Johann Benedict Listing (25 July 1808 – 24 December 1882) was a German mathematician. J. B. Listing was born in Frankfurt and died in Göttingen. He first introduced the term "topology" to replace the older term "geometria situs" (also called ...
around the same time. The
Möbius configuration In geometry, the Möbius configuration or Möbius tetrads is a certain configuration in Euclidean space or projective space, consisting of two mutually inscribed tetrahedra: each vertex of one tetrahedron lies on a face plane of the other tetrahed ...
, formed by two mutually inscribed tetrahedra, is also named after him. Möbius was the first to introduce
homogeneous coordinates In mathematics, homogeneous coordinates or projective coordinates, introduced by August Ferdinand Möbius in his 1827 work , are a system of coordinates used in projective geometry, just as Cartesian coordinates are used in Euclidean geometry. T ...
into
projective geometry In mathematics, projective geometry is the study of geometric properties that are invariant with respect to projective transformations. This means that, compared to elementary Euclidean geometry, projective geometry has a different setting, pro ...
. Many mathematical concepts are named after him, including the
Möbius plane In mathematics, a Möbius plane (named after August Ferdinand Möbius) is one of the Benz planes: Möbius plane, Laguerre plane and Minkowski plane. The classical example is based on the geometry of lines and circles in the real affine plane. A s ...
, the
Möbius transformation In geometry and complex analysis, a Möbius transformation of the complex plane is a rational function of the form f(z) = \frac of one complex variable ''z''; here the coefficients ''a'', ''b'', ''c'', ''d'' are complex numbers satisfying ''ad'' ...
s, important in projective geometry, and the
Möbius transform Moebius, Möbius or Mobius may refer to: People * August Ferdinand Möbius (1790–1868), German mathematician and astronomer * Theodor Möbius (1821–1890), German philologist * Karl Möbius (1825–1908), German zoologist and ecologist * Pau ...
of number theory. His interest in
number theory Number theory (or arithmetic or higher arithmetic in older usage) is a branch of pure mathematics devoted primarily to the study of the integers and arithmetic function, integer-valued functions. German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777 ...
led to the important
Möbius function The Möbius function is a multiplicative function in number theory introduced by the German mathematician August Ferdinand Möbius (also transliterated ''Moebius'') in 1832. It is ubiquitous in elementary and analytic number theory and most of ...
μ(''n'') and the
Möbius inversion formula In mathematics, the classic Möbius inversion formula is a relation between pairs of arithmetic functions, each defined from the other by sums over divisors. It was introduced into number theory in 1832 by August Ferdinand Möbius. A large gener ...
. In Euclidean geometry, he systematically developed the use of signed angles and line segments as a way of simplifying and unifying results. *
Karl Mollweide Karl Brandan Mollweide (3 February 1774 – 10 March 1825) was a German mathematician and astronomer who taught in Halle and Leipzig. In trigonometry, he discovered the formula known as Mollweide's formula. He invented a map projection call ...
: German mathematician and astronomer. In
trigonometry Trigonometry () is a branch of mathematics that studies relationships between side lengths and angles of triangles. The field emerged in the Hellenistic world during the 3rd century BC from applications of geometry to astronomical studies. T ...
, he discovered the formula known as
Mollweide's formula In trigonometry, Mollweide's formula is a pair of relationships between sides and angles in a triangle. A variant in more geometrical style was first published by Isaac Newton in 1707 and then by in 1746. Thomas Simpson published the now-standar ...
. He invented a
map projection In cartography, map projection is the term used to describe a broad set of transformations employed to represent the two-dimensional curved surface of a globe on a plane. In a map projection, coordinates, often expressed as latitude and longitud ...
called the
Mollweide projection 400px, Mollweide projection of the world 400px, The Mollweide projection with Tissot's indicatrix of deformation The Mollweide projection is an equal-area, pseudocylindrical map projection generally used for maps of the world or celestial sph ...
. *
Walther Meissner Fritz Walther Meissner (German: ''Meißner'') (16 December 1882 – 16 November 1974) was a German technical physicist. Meissner was born in Berlin to Waldemar Meissner and Johanna Greger. He studied mechanical engineering and physics at t ...
: He established the world's third largest helium-liquifier, and discovered in 1933 the
Meissner effect The Meissner effect (or Meissner–Ochsenfeld effect) is the expulsion of a magnetic field from a superconductor during its transition to the superconducting state when it is cooled below the critical temperature. This expulsion will repel a ne ...
, damping of the
magnetic field A magnetic field is a vector field that describes the magnetic influence on moving electric charges, electric currents, and magnetic materials. A moving charge in a magnetic field experiences a force perpendicular to its own velocity and to ...
in superconductors.


N

*
Thomas Nast Thomas Nast (; ; September 26, 1840December 7, 1902) was a German-born American caricaturist and editorial cartoonist often considered to be the "Father of the American Cartoon". He was a critic of Democratic Representative "Boss" Tweed and ...
: The
German American German Americans (german: Deutschamerikaner, ) are Americans who have full or partial German ancestry. With an estimated size of approximately 43 million in 2019, German Americans are the largest of the self-reported ancestry groups by the Unite ...
"Father of the American Cartoon". * Walther Nernst: Inventor of the
Nernst lamp The Nernst lamp was an early form of incandescent lamp. Construction Nernst lamps did not use a glowing tungsten filament. Instead, they used a ceramic rod that was heated to incandescence. Because the rod (unlike tungsten wire) would not ...
and Nobel laureate 1920 in Chemistry. *
Karl Nessler Charles Nessler (2 May 1872 in Todtnau, Germany – 22 January 1951 in Harrington Park, New Jersey, USA) was the inventor of the permanent wave. Life Karl Nessler was the son of Rosina (née Laitner) and Bartholomäus Nessler, a cobbler in ...
: Inventor of the permanent wave. *
Paul Gottlieb Nipkow Paul Julius Gottlieb Nipkow (22 August 1860 – 24 August 1940) was a German technician and inventor. He invented the Nipkow disk, which laid the foundation of television, since his disk was a fundamental component in the first televisions. Hun ...
: Technician and inventor, the "spiritual father" of the core element of first generation television technology. *
Emmy Noether Amalie Emmy NoetherEmmy is the ''Rufname'', the second of two official given names, intended for daily use. Cf. for example the résumé submitted by Noether to Erlangen University in 1907 (Erlangen University archive, ''Promotionsakt Emmy Noethe ...
: Mathematician. Groundbreaking contributions to abstract algebra and theoretical physics (
Noether's theorem Noether's theorem or Noether's first theorem states that every differentiable symmetry of the action of a physical system with conservative forces has a corresponding conservation law. The theorem was proven by mathematician Emmy Noether in ...
). Considered by many as the most influential woman in the history of mathematics.


O

*
Hermann Oberth Hermann Julius Oberth (; 25 June 1894 – 28 December 1989) was an Austro-Hungarian-born German physicist and engineer. He is considered one of the founding fathers of rocketry and astronautics, along with Robert Esnault-Pelterie, Konstantin Ts ...
: Pioneer of rocket science and discoverer of the
Oberth effect In astronautics, a powered flyby, or Oberth maneuver, is a maneuver in which a spacecraft falls into a gravitational well and then uses its engines to further accelerate as it is falling, thereby achieving additional speed. The resulting maneuver ...
. *
Georg Ohm Georg Simon Ohm (, ; 16 March 1789 – 6 July 1854) was a German physicist and mathematician. As a school teacher, Ohm began his research with the new electrochemical cell, invented by Italian scientist Alessandro Volta. Using equipment of his o ...
: physicist and mathematician, discoverer of the
Ohm's law Ohm's law states that the current through a conductor between two points is directly proportional to the voltage across the two points. Introducing the constant of proportionality, the resistance, one arrives at the usual mathematical equat ...
and Ohm's acoustic law *
August Oetker August Oetker (; January 6, 1862 – January 10, 1918) was a German inventor, food scientist and businessman. He is known as the creator of baking powder as a ready-to-use product, and also as the founder of the Dr. Oetker company. Biography E ...
: Pharmacist. He was the first to sell
baking powder Baking powder is a dry chemical leavening agent, a mixture of a carbonate or bicarbonate and a weak acid. The base and acid are prevented from reacting prematurely by the inclusion of a buffer such as cornstarch. Baking powder is used to increas ...
in small packets to households instead of bakeries (as others before him) and thus made it the popular product we know today. *
Hans Joachim Pabst von Ohain Hans Joachim Pabst von Ohain (14 December 191113 March 1998) was a German physicist, engineer, and the designer of the first operational jet engine. Together with Frank Whittle he is called the "father of the jet engine". His first test unit ran ...
: The modern jet engine in 1933, patented in 1936.
Frank Whittle Air Commodore Sir Frank Whittle, (1 June 1907 – 8 August 1996) was an English engineer, inventor and Royal Air Force (RAF) air officer. He is credited with inventing the turbojet engine. A patent was submitted by Maxime Guillaume in 1921 for ...
had developed a similar concept independently in 1928/1929. *
Wilhelm Ostwald Friedrich Wilhelm Ostwald (; 4 April 1932) was a Baltic German chemist and German philosophy, philosopher. Ostwald is credited with being one of the founders of the field of physical chemistry, with Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff, Walther Nernst, ...
: German chemist who received the
Nobel Prize in Chemistry ) , image = Nobel Prize.png , alt = A golden medallion with an embossed image of a bearded man facing left in profile. To the left of the man is the text "ALFR•" then "NOBEL", and on the right, the text (smaller) "NAT•" then "M ...
in 1909 for his work on
catalysis Catalysis () is the process of increasing the rate of a chemical reaction by adding a substance known as a catalyst (). Catalysts are not consumed in the reaction and remain unchanged after it. If the reaction is rapid and the catalyst recyc ...
, chemical equilibria and reaction velocities. Ostwald, Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff, and
Svante Arrhenius Svante August Arrhenius ( , ; 19 February 1859 – 2 October 1927) was a Swedes, Swedish scientist. Originally a physicist, but often referred to as a chemist, Arrhenius was one of the founders of the science of physical chemistry. He received ...
are usually credited with being the modern founders of the field of
physical chemistry Physical chemistry is the study of macroscopic and microscopic phenomena in chemical systems in terms of the principles, practices, and concepts of physics such as motion, energy, force, time, thermodynamics, quantum chemistry, statistical mecha ...
. *
Nicolaus August Otto Nicolaus August Otto (10 June 1832, Holzhausen an der Haide, Nassau – 26 January 1891, Cologne) was a German engineer who successfully developed the compressed charge internal combustion engine which ran on petroleum gas and led to the mod ...
: Inventor of the first internal-combustion engine to efficiently burn fuel directly in a piston chamber.


P

*
Wolfgang Paul Wolfgang Paul (; 10 August 1913 – 7 December 1993) was a German physicist, who co-developed the non-magnetic quadrupole mass filter which laid the foundation for what is now called an ion trap. He shared one-half of the Nobel Prize in Ph ...
: Physicist. Co-developed the non-magnetic quadrupole mass filter which laid the foundation for what we now call an
ion trap An ion trap is a combination of electric and/or magnetic fields used to capture charged particles — known as ions — often in a system isolated from an external environment. Atomic and molecular ion traps have a number of applications in phy ...
. Shared the Nobel Prize in 1989. *
Hans von Pechmann Hans von Pechmann (1 April 1850 – 19 April 1902) was a German chemist, renowned for his discovery of diazomethane in 1894. Pechmann condensation and Pechmann pyrazole synthesis. He also first prepared 1,2-diketones (e.g., diacetyl), acetonedic ...
: Chemist, renowned for his discovery of
diazomethane Diazomethane is the chemical compound CH2N2, discovered by German chemist Hans von Pechmann in 1894. It is the simplest diazo compound. In the pure form at room temperature, it is an extremely sensitive explosive yellow gas; thus, it is almost u ...
in 1894.
Pechmann condensation The Pechmann condensation is a synthesis of coumarins, starting from a phenol and a carboxylic acid or ester containing a β-carbonyl group. The condensation is performed under acidic conditions. The mechanism involves an esterification/transes ...
and
Pechmann pyrazole synthesis Pyrazole is an organic compound with the chemical formula, formula C3H3N2H. It is a heterocycle characterized by a 5-membered ring of three carbon atoms and two adjacent nitrogen atoms, which are in Arene substitution pattern, ortho-substitution. ...
. *
Rudolf Peierls Sir Rudolf Ernst Peierls, (; ; 5 June 1907 – 19 September 1995) was a German-born British physicist who played a major role in Tube Alloys, Britain's nuclear weapon programme, as well as the subsequent Manhattan Project, the combined Allied ...
: nuclear physicist. *
Julius Richard Petri Julius Richard Petri (31 May 185220 December 1921) was a German microbiologist who is generally credited with inventing the device known as the Petri dish, which is named after him, while working as assistant to bacteriologist Robert Koch. Li ...
: Bacteriologist who is generally credited with inventing the
Petri dish A Petri dish (alternatively known as a Petri plate or cell-culture dish) is a shallow transparent lidded dish that biologists use to hold growth medium in which cells can be cultured,R. C. Dubey (2014): ''A Textbook Of Biotechnology For Class- ...
while working as assistant to
Robert Koch Heinrich Hermann Robert Koch ( , ; 11 December 1843 – 27 May 1910) was a German physician and microbiologist. As the discoverer of the specific causative agents of deadly infectious diseases including tuberculosis, cholera (though the Vibrio ...
. * Emil Pfeiffer: Discovery of
Infectious mononucleosis Infectious mononucleosis (IM, mono), also known as glandular fever, is an infection usually caused by the Epstein–Barr virus (EBV). Most people are infected by the virus as children, when the disease produces few or no symptoms. In young adult ...
*
Fritz Pfleumer Fritz Pfleumer (20 March 1881 – 29 August 1945) was a German engineer who invented magnetic tape for recording sound. Biography Fritz was born as the son of Robert and Minna, née Hünich. His father Robert (1848–1934) was born in Greiz, ...
: Inventor of magnetic tape for recording sound. He built the world's first practical tape recorder, called Magnetophon K1. *
Joseph Pilates Joseph Hubertus Pilates (9 December 1883 – 9 October 1967) was a German physical trainer, credited with inventing and promoting the Pilates method of physical fitness. Biography Early life Joseph Hubertus Pilates was born on 9 December ...
: inventor of the physical fitness system named after him:
Pilates Pilates (; ) is a type of mind-body exercise developed in the early 20th century by German physical trainer Joseph Pilates, after whom it was named. Pilates called his method "Contrology". It is practiced worldwide, especially in countries suc ...
*
Max Planck Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck (, ; 23 April 1858 – 4 October 1947) was a German theoretical physicist whose discovery of energy quanta won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918. Planck made many substantial contributions to theoretical p ...
: Physicist, Scientist. He is considered to be the founder of the quantum theory, and one of the most important physicists of the twentieth century. *
Robert Wichard Pohl Robert Wichard Pohl (10 August 1884 – 5 June 1976) was a German physicist at the University of Göttingen. Nevill Francis Mott described him as the "father of solid state physics". See also: "Components of the solid state", Nevill Mott, New Sci ...
: In 1938, together with Rudolf Hilsch, built first functioning solid-state amplifier using salt as the semiconductor. *
Ludwig Prandtl Ludwig Prandtl (4 February 1875 – 15 August 1953) was a German fluid dynamicist, physicist and aerospace scientist. He was a pioneer in the development of rigorous systematic mathematical analyses which he used for underlying the science of ...
: First to explain the
boundary layer In physics and fluid mechanics, a boundary layer is the thin layer of fluid in the immediate vicinity of a bounding surface formed by the fluid flowing along the surface. The fluid's interaction with the wall induces a no-slip boundary condi ...
and its importance for drag and streamlining in aircraft in 1904. He established and headed the Aerodynamische Versuchsanstalt in Göttingen, now
Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization The Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization in Göttingen, Germany, is a research institute for investigations of complex non-equilibrium systems, particularly in physics and biology. Its founding history goes back to Ludwig Pran ...
. During his tenure the first wind tunnel in Germany was built here, thereby establishing a specific design for wind tunnels (Göttingen type). *
Johann Friedrich Pfaff Johann Friedrich Pfaff (sometimes spelled Friederich; 22 December 1765 – 21 April 1825) was a German mathematician. He was described as one of Germany's most eminent mathematicians during the 19th century. He was a precursor of the German school ...
: One of Germany's most eminent mathematicians during the 19th century. He studied
mathematical series In mathematics, a series is, roughly speaking, a description of the operation of adding infinitely many quantities, one after the other, to a given starting quantity. The study of series is a major part of calculus and its generalization, math ...
and
integral calculus In mathematics, an integral assigns numbers to Function (mathematics), functions in a way that describes Displacement (geometry), displacement, area, volume, and other concepts that arise by combining infinitesimal data. The process of finding ...
, and is noted for his work on
partial differential equation In mathematics, a partial differential equation (PDE) is an equation which imposes relations between the various partial derivatives of a Multivariable calculus, multivariable function. The function is often thought of as an "unknown" to be sol ...
s of the first order (
Pfaffian system In mathematics, certain systems of partial differential equations are usefully formulated, from the point of view of their underlying geometric and algebraic structure, in terms of a system of differential forms. The idea is to take advantage of the ...
s as they are now called) which became part of the theory of
differential form In mathematics, differential forms provide a unified approach to define integrands over curves, surfaces, solids, and higher-dimensional manifolds. The modern notion of differential forms was pioneered by Élie Cartan. It has many applications, ...
s. *
Julius Plücker Julius Plücker (16 June 1801 – 22 May 1868) was a German mathematician and physicist. He made fundamental contributions to the field of analytical geometry and was a pioneer in the investigations of cathode rays that led eventually to the dis ...
: Framed the
Plücker formula In mathematics, a Plücker formula, named after Julius Plücker, is one of a family of formulae, of a type first developed by Plücker in the 1830s, that relate certain numeric invariants of algebraic curves to corresponding invariants of their du ...
. He made fundamental contributions to the field of
analytical geometry In classical mathematics, analytic geometry, also known as coordinate geometry or Cartesian geometry, is the study of geometry using a coordinate system. This contrasts with synthetic geometry. Analytic geometry is used in physics and engineer ...
and was a pioneer in the investigations of
cathode ray Cathode rays or electron beam (e-beam) are streams of electrons observed in discharge tubes. If an evacuated glass tube is equipped with two electrodes and a voltage is applied, glass behind the positive electrode is observed to glow, due to ele ...
s that led eventually to the discovery of the
electron The electron ( or ) is a subatomic particle with a negative one elementary electric charge. Electrons belong to the first generation of the lepton particle family, and are generally thought to be elementary particles because they have no kn ...
. He also vastly extended the study of Lamé curves. *
Harald Popp Harald Popp (born 30 September, 1956 in Erlangen) is a German electrical engineer. Together with Karlheinz Brandenburg, Ernst Eberlein, Heinz Gerhäuser (former Institutes Director of Fraunhofer IIS), Bernhard Grill, Jürgen Herre (all Fraunhofer ...
: Inventor and audio engineer; father of audio compression format MPEG Audio Layer 3, more commonly known as MP3.


R

*
Adolf Rambold Adolf Rambold (5 October 1900 – 14 May 1996) was a German inventor and engineer. Life Rambold worked for the German company Teekanne since 1924. In 1929, he invented the tea bag packing machine called Pompadour. In 1949, being a co-owne ...
: Inventor of modern
tea bag A tea bag, or the compound teabag, is a small, porous, sealed bag or packet, typically containing tea leaves or the leaves of other herbs, which is immersed in water to steep and make an infusion. Originally used only for tea (''Camellia ...
. *
Johann Philipp Reis Johann Philipp Reis (; 7 January 1834 – 14 January 1874) was a self-taught German scientist and inventor. In 1861, he constructed the first ''make-and-break'' telephone, today called the Reis telephone. Early life and education Reis ...
: Inventor of the first phone transmitter in 1861, he also invented the term ''Telephone''. *
Josef Rodenstock Josef Rodenstock (11 April 1846 – 18 February 1932) was a German industrialist and the founder of Rodenstock, a manufacturer of optical systems. Josef Rodenstock was born in Ershausen, in the Prussian Province of Saxony. The eldest son ...
: Founder of Rodenstock, manufacturer of optical systems, ophthalmic lenses and spectacles frames. *
Ralf Reski Ralf Reski (born 18 November 1958 in Gelsenkirchen) is a German professor of plant biotechnology and former dean of the Faculty of Biology of the University of Freiburg. He is also affiliated to the French École supérieure de biotechnologie ...
:
Moss bioreactor A moss bioreactor with '' Physcomitrella patens'' A moss bioreactor is a photobioreactor used for the cultivation and propagation of mosses. It is usually used in molecular farming for the production of recombinant protein using transgenic moss. ...
(1998). * Paul Julius Freiherr von Reuter: Communications pioneer. * Fritz Reiche: Was a student of Max Planck and a colleague of Albert Einstein, who was active in, and made important contributions to the early development of quantum mechanics including co-authoring the Thomas-Reiche-Kuhn sum rule. *
Hans Reichel Hans Reichel (10 May 1949 – 22 November 2011) was a German improvisational guitarist, experimental luthier, inventor, and type designer. Career Reichel was born in Hagen, Germany. He began to teach himself violin at age seven, playing in the ...
:
Musical instrument A musical instrument is a device created or adapted to make musical sounds. In principle, any object that produces sound can be considered a musical instrument—it is through purpose that the object becomes a musical instrument. A person who pl ...
inventor. Inventor of the
daxophone The daxophone, invented by Hans Reichel, is an electric wooden experimental musical instrument of the friction idiophones category. Etymology The ''dax'' in ''daxophone'' is derived from the German word ''Dachs'', meaning "badger" and refer ...
and various
overtone An overtone is any resonant frequency above the fundamental frequency of a sound. (An overtone may or may not be a harmonic) In other words, overtones are all pitches higher than the lowest pitch within an individual sound; the fundamental i ...
guitars. *
Bernhard Riemann Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann (; 17 September 1826 – 20 July 1866) was a German mathematician who made contributions to analysis, number theory, and differential geometry. In the field of real analysis, he is mostly known for the first rig ...
: Mathematician, who made lasting contributions to analysis, number theory, and differential geometry. * Johann Wilhelm Ritter: Physicist and discoverer of
Ultraviolet Ultraviolet (UV) is a form of electromagnetic radiation with wavelength from 10 nanometer, nm (with a corresponding frequency around 30 Hertz, PHz) to 400 nm (750 Hertz, THz), shorter than that of visible light, but longer than ...
. *
Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen Wilhelm may refer to: People and fictional characters * William Charles John Pitcher, costume designer known professionally as "Wilhelm" * Wilhelm (name), a list of people and fictional characters with the given name or surname Other uses * Mount ...
: Physicist and discoverer of x-rays/Röntgen rays (8 November 1895), this earned him the first Nobel Prize in Physics in 1901. *
Arthur Rudolph Arthur Louis Hugo Rudolph (November 9, 1906 – January 1, 1996) was a German rocket engineer who was a leader of the effort to develop the V-2 rocket for Nazi Germany. After World War II, the United States Government's Office of Strategic Ser ...
: Rocket engineer who, together with
Wernher von Braun Wernher Magnus Maximilian Freiherr von Braun ( , ; 23 March 191216 June 1977) was a German and American aerospace engineer and space architect. He was a member of the Nazi Party and Allgemeine SS, as well as the leading figure in the develop ...
, played a key role in the development of the
V-2 rocket The V-2 (german: Vergeltungswaffe 2, lit=Retaliation Weapon 2), with the technical name ''Aggregat 4'' (A-4), was the world’s first long-range guided ballistic missile. The missile, powered by a liquid-propellant rocket engine, was develop ...
. * Heinrich Daniel Ruhmkorff: German instrument maker who commercialized the
induction coil An induction coil or "spark coil" (archaically known as an inductorium or Ruhmkorff coil after Heinrich Rühmkorff) is a type of electrical transformer used to produce high-voltage pulses from a low-voltage direct current (DC) supply. p.98 To ...
(often referred to as the Ruhmkorff coil). *
Ernst Ruska Ernst August Friedrich Ruska (; 25 December 1906 – 27 May 1988) was a German physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1986 for his work in electron optics, including the design of the first electron microscope. Life and career Erns ...
: Physicist, developed the first electron microscope in 1933. Nobel laureate 1986. *
Karl Wilhelm Rosenmund Karl Wilhelm Louis Rosenmund (15 December 1884 – 8 February 1965) was a German chemist. He was born in Berlin and died in Kiel. Rosenmund studied chemistry and received his Ph.D. 1906 from University of Berlin for his work with Otto Diels. He ...
: He discovered the
Rosenmund reduction The Rosenmund reduction is a hydrogenation process in which an acyl chloride is selectively reduced to an aldehyde. The reaction was named after Karl Wilhelm Rosenmund, who first reported it in 1918. The reaction, a hydrogenolysis, is cataly ...
, which is the reduction of acyl chlorides to
aldehydes In organic chemistry, an aldehyde () is an organic compound containing a functional group with the structure . The functional group itself (without the "R" side chain) can be referred to as an aldehyde but can also be classified as a formyl grou ...
over palladium-on-carbon catalyst. The Rosenmund-von Braun reaction, the conversion of an aryl bromide to an arylnitrile is also named after him.


S

* Carl Wilhelm Scheele: Oxygen (although Joseph Priestley published his findings first), identification of molybdenum, tungsten, barium, hydrogen and chlorine * Arthur Scherbius: Developed the mechanical cipher machine Enigma machine, Enigma. Patent granted in 1918. *Wilhelm Schickard: mechanical calculator in 1623. * Paul Schlack: Invented Nylon 6. * Moritz Schlick, Friedrich Albert Moritz Schlick: Was a German philosopher, physicist and the founding father of logical positivism and the Vienna Circle. * Heinrich Schliemann: One of the fathers of modern archaeology, among other things he discovered Homeric Troy. * Hugo Schmeisser: Developed the first modern assault rifle Sturmgewehr 44, StG 44 in 1942. * Bernhard Schmidt: Developed a photographic telescope with minimal optical errors: the Schmidt camera. * Paul Schmidt (inventor), Paul Schmidt: Developed since 1928 his idea of a new drive, the "pulsating incineration", also used in the V-1 flying bomb (engine was called "Argus-Schmidtrohr"); pulsejet was a development by Schmidt. * Christian Friedrich Schönbein: Professor Schönbein is credited with four scientific advances: Ozone, Gun cotton, Collodion and Fuel cell * Johann Lukas Schönlein: Professor of medicine, he discovered among other things the parasitic cause of ringworm or favus (Achorion Schönleinii). * Otto Schoetensack: Named the Homo heidelbergensis. * Otto Schott: Inventor of borosilicate glass. Donated his shares in the company Carl Zeiss to form
Carl-Zeiss-Stiftung The Carl-Zeiss- Stiftung (Carl Zeiss Foundation), legally located in Heidenheim an der Brenz and Jena, Germany, and with its administrative Headquarter in Stuttgart, is the sole shareholder of the two companies Carl Zeiss AG and Schott AG. It w ...
, still in existence today. * Walter H. Schottky: Played a major early role in developing the theory of electron and ion emission phenomena, invented the screen-grid vacuum tube and the pentode. *Johannes Heinrich Schultz: developed the desensitization-relaxation technique called ''Autogenic training''. * : Silversmith, invented coining with the screw press around 1550. * Theodor Schwann: Discovery of properties of cells in animals. * Karl Schwarzschild: astronomer, Schwarzschild metric, Deriving the Schwarzschild solution, Schwarzschild radius * Alois Senefelder: He invented the printing technique of lithography in 1796. * Friedrich Sertürner: First to isolate morphine from the opium poppy in 1803/1804, discovering morphine. * Philipp Franz von Siebold: Physician and naturalist, detailed description and collection of the Japanese flora and fauna. Introduced Western medicine to Japan and opened a medical school. * Ernst Werner von Siemens: Dynamo, pointer telegraph that used a needle to point to the right letter, first electric elevator, trolleybus. * Max Skladanowsky: Bioscop, German inventor and early filmmaker. * Friedrich Soennecken: Invented Hole punch and ring binder. * Arnold Sommerfeld: Theoretical physicist who pioneered developments in atomic and quantum physics. * Johannes Stark: Discovery of the Doppler effect in canal rays and the splitting of spectral lines in electric fields" (the latter is known as the Stark effect). * Jack Steinberger: German-American-Switzerland, Swiss physicist, co-discovered the muon neutrino, shared 1988 Nobel Prize in Physics. * Georg Wilhelm Steller: Chief naturalist on Vitus Bering's expedition during which Alaska was discovered (1741) and pioneer of Alaskan Natural History. Steller's sea cow (now extinct) was named after him. * Otto Stern: Nobel laureate; contributed to the discovery of spin quantization in the Stern–Gerlach experiment with Walther Gerlach in 1922. * Heinrich Stölzel: Developed the valve for brass instruments which is used today in 1818. Friedrich Blühmel had made a similar development independently at the same time. * Horst Ludwig Störmer: German-American physicist. Shared the Nobel Prize in 1998 for the discovery of a new form of quantum fluid with fractionally charged excitations. * Levi Strauss: The
German American German Americans (german: Deutschamerikaner, ) are Americans who have full or partial German ancestry. With an estimated size of approximately 43 million in 2019, German Americans are the largest of the self-reported ancestry groups by the Unite ...
father of jeans, blue jeans. * Ernst Stromer: Discovery and Describing of Aegyptosaurus, Bahariasaurus, Carcharodontosaurus, and the largest known theropod, Spinosaurus aegyptiacus. Stromer also described the giant crocodilian Stomatosuchus. * Fritz Strassmann, Friedrich Wilhelm "Fritz" Strassmann: German chemist who, with
Otto Hahn Otto Hahn (; 8 March 1879 – 28 July 1968) was a German chemist who was a pioneer in the fields of radioactivity and radiochemistry. He is referred to as the father of nuclear chemistry and father of nuclear fission. Hahn and Lise Meitner ...
in early 1939, identified barium in the residue after bombarding uranium with neutrons, results which, when confirmed, demonstrated the previously unknown phenomenon of
nuclear fission Nuclear fission is a reaction in which the nucleus of an atom splits into two or more smaller nuclei. The fission process often produces gamma photons, and releases a very large amount of energy even by the energetic standards of radio ...
. * Hubertus Strughold: German-born physiologist and prominent medical researcher. For his role in pioneering the study of the physical and psychological effects of manned spaceflight he became known as "Space medicine, The Father of Space Medicine". * Thomas C. Südhof: biochemist, discovered how molecule Cell signaling, signals instruct Vesicle (biology and chemistry), vesicles to release their cargo in Cell (biology), cell. Shared the Nobel prize in Physiology or Medicine 2013.


T

* Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus: He is considered to have been the inventor of European porcelain. * Oscar Troplowitz: He invented adhesive tape, ''Leukoplast''.


U

* Diedrich Uhlhorn, Dietrich "Diedrich" Uhlhorn: Engineer, mechanic and inventor, who invented the first mechanical tachometer (1817), between 1817 and 1830 inventor of the Presse Monétaire (level Mint (coin), coin press known as Uhlhorn Press) which bears his name.


V

* Abraham Vater: Professor of anatomy; Ampulla of Vater. * Richard Vetter: Developed the most fuel efficient condensing boiler for heating systems in 1980. Used in many houses in Europe. * Rudolf Virchow: "Father of modern pathology"; numerous discoveries in the area of medicine. * Tri-Ergon, Hans Vogt: Invented sound-on-film (idea 1905) together with Jo Engl and Joseph Massolle, first sound-on-film for the public on 17 September 1922 in Filmtheater ''Alhambra'', Berlin, Germany. * Woldemar Voigt (often: Waldemar Voigt): Physicist, who taught at the Georg August University of Göttingen. He worked on crystal physics, thermodynamics and electro-optics. He discovered the Voigt effect in 1898. * Woldemar Voigt (engineer): Chief designer at Messerschmitt's Oberammergau offices and pioneer of the Me 163 and Me 264, project leader of the development of Me P. 1101, Me P. 1106, Me P. 1110, Me P. 1111, Messerschmitt P.1112, Me P. 1112 and Me P. 1116. *
Jacob Volhard Jacob Volhard (4 June 1834 – 14 January 1910) was the German chemist who discovered, together with his student Hugo Erdmann, the Volhard–Erdmann cyclization reaction. He was also responsible for the improvement of the Hell–Volhard–Ze ...
: Chemist who discovered, together with his student
Hugo Erdmann Hugo Wilhelm Traugott Erdmann (8 May 1862 – 25 June 1910) was the German chemist who discovered, together with his doctoral advisor Jacob Volhard, the Volhard-Erdmann cyclization. In 1898 he was the first who coined the term ''noble gas'' (the ...
, the Volhard–Erdmann cyclization.


W

* Martin Waldseemüller: Cartographer, used the name "Americas (terminology), America" on his map Universalis Cosmographia in honour of the Florentine explorer Amerigo Vespucci. The map was drawn at St-Die in 1507 and it was the first time "America" was used on a map. * Otto Wallach: Chemist who researched, amongst others, alicyclic compounds. Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1910. * Hellmuth Walter: Engineer who pioneered research into rocket engines and gas turbines. * August von Wassermann: Developed a complement fixation test for the diagnosis of syphilis in 1906 * Felix Wankel: Inventor of the Rotary Motor. * Max Weber: Discovered the mass effects of capitalism and modernity. * Wilhelm Eduard Weber: Inventor of the first electromagnetic telegraph together with Carl Friedrich Gauss. * Alfred Wegener: He is most notable for proposing continental drift in 1912 * Wilhelm Weinberg: Hardy–Weinberg principle * Gustav Weißkopf: Aviation pioneer, designer and builder of early aircraft and engines, is reported to be the first flying a powered aircraft in 1901 * Rainer Weiss: born in Berlin, American physiscist who invented laser interferometric gravitational wave detectors. Shared the Nobel Prize for Physics 2017. * Johan Wilcke: Inventor of the
electrophorus In electromagnetism, an electrophorus or electrophore is a simple, manual, capacitive, electrostatic generator used to produce charge via the process of electrostatic induction. A first version of it was invented in 1762 by Swedish professor Jo ...
* Hugo Winckler: Discovery of Hattusa * Clemens Alexander Winkler: Chemist who discovered the element germanium in 1886. * August Wöhler: Investigated Fatigue (material)#The S-N curve, fatigue phenomena in the behavior of materials * Friedrich Wöhler: The first to synthesize urea. Wöhler is regarded as a pioneer in organic chemistry. * Heinrich Wöhlk: Contact lenses in Poly(methyl methacrylate), PMMA * Theodor Wulf: Cosmic ray (together with Austrian Victor Hess)


Z

* Hermann Zapf: Pioneer of computer typography and creator of many well-known typefaces. * Carl Zeiss: Pioneered glass casting and allied procedures and processes for high quality optics. * Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin (1838–1917): Inventor of the airship named after him. Start of the airship LZ1 in 1900. * Karl Zimmer: Discovered the effects of ionizing radiation on DNA in 1935. * Karl Ziegler:He won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1963, with Giulio Natta, for work on polymers. * Konrad Zuse: Inventor of the first functional program-controlled Turing-complete computer in 1941, and the first high-level programming language Plankalkül in 1942.


See also

* German inventions and discoveries * List of German Americans


Notes


References


External links


"Made in Germany"



German inventors—"Made in Germany"
{{DEFAULTSORT:German inventors and discoverers German inventors, Germany history-related lists, Inventors and discoverers Lists of inventors, German Discoverers, German Lists of German people by occupation, Inventors