73 Notable alumni of RWTH Aachen University

Holger Braunschweig FRSC is Head and Chair of Inorganic Chemistry at the Julius-Maximilians-University of Würzburg in Würzburg, Germany. He is best known for founding the field of transition metal-boron multiple bonding, the synthesis of the first stable compounds containing boron-boron and boron-oxygen triple bonds, the isolation of the first non-carbon/nitrogen main-group dicarbonyl, and the first fixation of dinitrogen at an...

Eckehard Schöll is a German physicist and mathematician as well as a Professor of theoretical physics at Technische Universität Berlin. He is an expert in the field of nonlinear dynamics and head of the group Nonlinear dynamics and control. His work pertains to research in the fields of mathematics and physics, particularly semiconductor physics, neurodynamics and bifurcation theory. His latest...

Ulrike M. Sattler MAE is a professor of computer science in the information management group of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Manchester and a visiting professor at the University of Oslo.

Wolfgang Eisenmenger was a German physicist.

Maria Schwarz was a German architect and professor best known for her church architecture.

Fang Weigui is a Chinese comparative literature scholar, sinologist, and literary translator.

Harald Christian Pedersen was a Norwegian metallurgist.

Max Alvary, born as Maximilian Achenbach, was a German operatic tenor.

Frank Grobe is a German politician serving as a member of the Landtag of Hesse since 2019. He has served as chief whip of the Alternative for Germany since 2019.

Iwona Kozłowska is a Polish diplomat, who served as Poland's ambassador to Switzerland.

Detlef Zuehlke is a German engineer and professor.

Gabriele Nebe is a German mathematician with contributions in the theory of lattices, modular forms, spherical designs, and error-correcting codes. With Neil Sloane, she maintains the Online Catalogue of Lattices. She is a professor in the department of mathematics at RWTH Aachen University.

Neoklis Sylikiotis is a Cypriot politician. From July 2014 to July 2019, he was a Member of the European Parliament and Vice-Chair of GUE/NGL. Sylikiotis was the Cypriot Minister of the Interior between September 2006 and July 2007, and again, between March 2008 and March 2012. Between March 2012 and February 2013, he was Minister of Commerce, Industry and Tourism....

Martin Christoph Wittig was the German CEO of the management consultant firm Roland Berger Strategy Consultants. He is the successor/antecessor of CEO Burkhard Schwenker. Martin Christof Wittig is married and lives with his wife and his two sons near Zurich (Switzerland).

Gunter Thielen was chairman and chief executive officer of the Bertelsmann Stiftung.

Niklas Höhne is a German scientist in the field of national and international climate policy and mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions. He is founder of the NewClimate Institute in Cologne, Germany, and professor at Wageningen University.

Wolfgang Dahmen is a German mathematician working in approximation theory, numerical analysis, and partial differential equations. In 2002, he was awarded the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize and in 2011 the Gauss Lectureship. He was also a taekwondo athlete. He has been the Chair of the Society for the Foundations of Computational Mathematics (2014–).

Dr. Wolfgang Benjamin Klemperer was born in Dresden, Germany, the son of the Austrian nationals Leon and Charlotte Klemperer. He was in his time a prominent aviation and aerospace scientist and engineer, who ranks among the pioneers of early aviation.

Bachtiar Aly is a professor from Indonesia who majored in Communication and Politics. He was the Indonesian Ambassador for Egypt from 2002–2005. From 2014 to 2019, he was member of the People's Representative Council under the NasDem Party.

Walter Robert Wilhelm Grotrian was a German astronomer and astrophysicist.

Antonia Grunenberg is a German political scientist, totalitarianism researcher and an expert on the political thought of Hannah Arendt. She is professor emerita at the University of Oldenburg, where she taught as a full professor from 1998 until her 2009 retirement, and where she was director of the Hannah Arendt Centre. She is also editor of the book series Hannah...

Heike John is a German retired swimmer and former astronaut candidate.

Rolf Martin Schmitz is a German manager and the former chief executive officer (CEO) at the German utilities company RWE AG.

Lu Yongxiang is a Chinese mechanical engineer and politician. He served as President of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Vice Chairman of the National People's Congress.

Heike Raab is a German politician (SPD), currently serving as Deputy Minister of the Interior, for Sports and Infrastructure of the state of Rhineland-Palatinate.

Rudolf Paul Maria Henke is a physician and politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) who served as a member of the German Bundestag from 2009 until 2021.

Herbert Franz Mataré was a German physicist. The focus of his research was the field of semiconductor research. His best-known work is the first functional European transistor, which he developed and patented together with Heinrich Welker in the vicinity of Paris in 1948, independent from the Bell Labs engineers who had developed the first transistor shortly before.

Philipp Gruissem is a German professional poker player from Krefeld.

Ursula Gather is a German statistician and academic administrator. From 2008 to 2020, she was rector of TU Dortmund University. Since 2013, Gather has been chairwoman of the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Foundation.

Mariam bint Mohammed Saeed Hareb Almheiri is an Emirati politician who is currently the head of the International Affairs Office at the Presidential Court. She previously served as the Minister of Climate Change and Environment in the United Arab Emirates until 11 January 2024.

Jesco Hans Heinrich Max Freiherr von Puttkamer was a German-American aerospace engineer, senior manager at NASA, and a pulp science fiction writer.

Kemal Şahin is a Turkish–German entrepreneur, a textile tycoon, and founder and CEO of Şahinler Holding. He is also an environmental activist against erosion.

Nienke Brinkman is a Dutch long-distance runner, both on the road as well as on trails. She won the bronze medal in the marathon at the 2022 European Athletics Championships, which was her first international medal, and has a personal best of 2:22:51 which she ran at the Rotterdam Marathon.

Rolf Eberhard Buch is a German business executive. In 2013, he was appointed CEO of the real estate company Deutsche Annington, which, following the takeover of GAGFAH in the year 2015, was renamed Vonovia. Previously, Buch held an executive position at Arvato.

Giuseppe Gabrielli was an Italian aeronautics engineer. He is famous as the designer of numerous Italian military aircraft, including the Fiat G.50 Freccia and Fiat G.55 Centauro World War II fighters.

Thomas Rabe is a German business executive. He is currently the chairman of the German sportswear brand Adidas. In 2006, he was appointed to the Bertelsmann executive board, of which he has been chairman and chief executive officer since 2012. Under his leadership, the group has become more international, more digital and more diversified. In particular, he has advanced the...

Oliver Krischer is a German politician of the Alliance '90/The Greens who has been serving as State Minister for Environment, Nature Protection, and Transport in the government of Minister-President of North Rhine-Westphalia Hendrik Wüst since 2022.

Sonia Seymour Mikich is a German TV journalist.

Hans Wilhelm Schlegel is a German physicist, a former ESA astronaut, and a veteran of two NASA Space Shuttle missions.

Mario Albert Theissen is the former BMW Motorsport Director and was team principal of BMW Sauber, the company's Formula One team from 2005 until 2009, when BMW sold the team back to Peter Sauber.

Joybrato Mukherjee is a German professor of English linguistics and the president of the University of Cologne. When he took office as president of the University of Giessen in 2009, he was the youngest university president ever appointed in Germany. In June 2019, he was elected president of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD); he took office on 1 January...

Friedrich Peter Johannes Joussen is a German businessman, and the former executive chairman (Vorstandsvorsitzender) of TUI Group (Touristik Union International).

Wendelin Frederik Wiedeking is the former president and chief executive officer of the German car manufacturer, Porsche AG, a post he held from 1993 through July 23, 2009. He was also speaker of the company's executive committee and was a member of the supervisory board of Volkswagen AG from 2006 to 2009.

Thomas Christian Südhof, ForMemRS, is a German-American biochemist known for his study of synaptic transmission. Currently, he is a professor in the school of medicine in the department of molecular and cellular physiology, and by courtesy in neurology, and in psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University.

Necmettin Erbakan was a Turkish politician and political theorist who served as the 23rd prime minister of Turkey from 1996 to 1997. He was pressured by the military to step down as prime minister and was later banned from politics by the Constitutional Court of Turkey for purportedly violating the separation of religion and state as mandated by the constitution.

Mai Thi Nguyen-Kim is a German chemist, science communicator, television presenter and YouTuber. In June 2020 she was elected to the senate of the Max Planck Society.

Hans-Jürgen Hubert Dohrenkamp, better known by his stage name Jürgen von der Lippe, is a German television presenter, entertainer, actor, musician and comedian. His stage name comes from the fact that he was born near the source of the river Lippe.

Eike Fuhrken Batista da Silva is a Brazilian businessman who made and lost a multi-billion dollar fortune in mining and oil and gas industries. He engaged in a quest to promote Brazil's infrastructure with large-scale projects, such as the Porto do Açu.

Peter Joseph William Debye ForMemRS was a Dutch-American physicist and physical chemist, and Nobel laureate in Chemistry.

Bacharuddin Jusuf Habibie was an Indonesian statesman, engineer, scientist and inventor who served as the third president of Indonesia from 1998 to 1999. A little over two months after his inauguration as the seventh vice president in March 1998, he succeeded Suharto, who resigned after 32 years in office, thereby being the country's first vice president to assume the presidency...

Michael Espendiller is a German politician for the populist Alternative for Germany and since 2017 a member of the Bundestag.

Katrin Suder is a German physicist and management consultant who served as State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Defense in the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel from 2014 to 2018.

Karl Wilhelm Lauterbach is a German scientist, physician, and politician of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), who served as Federal Minister of Health from 2021 to 2025. He is professor of health economics and epidemiology at the University of Cologne (on leave since 2005). Since the 2005 German federal election, he has been a member of the Bundestag...

Jarosław Wacław Lasecki is a Polish politician, entrepreneur and manager. He was a member of the Senate of the Republic of Poland in 2005–2007 and 2011–2015. He is married and has five children.

Ursula "Ulla" Schmidt is a German politician of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). From 2001 to 2009 she was Federal Minister of Health in the German Government. Between 2013 and 2017, she served as Vice-President of the German Bundestag.

Dörte Gatermann is a German architect who is best known for designing the Triangle Tower in Cologne.

Harald Krüger is a German manager who served as the chairman of the board of management (CEO) for BMW; he was replaced on 16 August 2019 by Oliver Zipse, after he declined to be considered for contract renewal in 2020.

Daniela De Ridder is a German-Belgian politician of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) who has served as a member of the Bundestag from the state of Lower Saxony from 2013 until 2021 and again since May 2022.

Karl Waldemar Ziegler was a German chemist who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1963, with Giulio Natta, for work on polymers. The Nobel Committee recognized his "excellent work on organometallic compounds...led to new polymerization reactions and... paved the way for new and highly useful industrial processes". He is also known for his work involving free-radicals, many-membered rings, and...

Inga Humpe is a German singer, songwriter and producer. She performed with Neue Deutsche Welle bands such as Neonbabies, DÖF and Humpe & Humpe. Her sister is the singer and producer Annette Humpe, with whom she performed regularly during her career. The song "Riding into Blue (Cowboy Song)" produced by Trevor Horn became a minor hit in 1990. Later that...

Peter Paul Freiherr von Eltz-Rübenach was Reich Postal Minister (Reichspostminister) and Reich Minister of Transport (Reichsminister für Verkehr) of Germany between 1932 and 1937.

Hugo Junkers 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 Motor Works), was one of the mainstays of the German aircraft industry in the years between World War I and World War II. His multi-engined, all-metal passenger and freight planes...

Walter Hohmann was a German engineer who made an important contribution to the understanding of orbital dynamics. In a book published in 1925, Hohmann demonstrated a fuel-efficient path to move a spacecraft between two different orbits, now called a Hohmann transfer orbit. He received his Ph.D. from the RWTH Aachen University in 1920.

Alfried Felix Alwyn Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach was a German industrialist and the last personal sole owner of the company Fried. Krupp. The eldest of eight siblings, he came from the Krupp family on his mother's side and from the von Bohlen und Halbach family on his father's side.

Arthur Eichengrün was a German Jewish chemist, materials scientist, and inventor. He is known for developing the highly successful anti-gonorrhea drug Protargol, the standard treatment for 50 years until the adoption of antibiotics, and for his pioneering contributions in plastics: co-developing (with Theodore Becker) the first soluble cellulose acetate materials in 1903, called "Cellit", and creating processes for the manufacture...

Friedrich Otto Schott was a German chemist, glass technologist, and the inventor of borosilicate glass. Schott systematically investigated the relationship between the chemical composition of the glass and its properties. In this way, he solved fundamental problems in glass properties, identifying compositions with optical properties that approach the theoretical limit. Schott's findings were a major advance in the optics for...

Georg Karl Wilhelm Hamel was a German mathematician with interests in mechanics, the foundations of mathematics and function theory.

Franz Josef Radermacher is a German mathematician and economist. He is Professor of Informatics at Ulm University. He is one of the co-founders of the Global Marshall Plan Initiative that suggests a socio-ecological plan to eradicate poverty, increasing global wealth while protecting natural resources.

Rolf Widerøe was a Norwegian accelerator physicist who was the originator of many particle acceleration concepts, including the resonance accelerator and the betatron accelerator.

Matthias Josef Maurer is a German ESA astronaut and materials scientist, who was selected in 2015 to take part in space training.

Gerald Teschl is an Austrian mathematical physicist and professor of mathematics. He works in the area of mathematical physics; in particular direct and inverse spectral theory with application to completely integrable partial differential equations (soliton equations).

Ena Anglein von Baer Jahn is a Chilean journalist, political scientist and former senator.