79 Notable alumni of Saarland University

Alexander Berghaus is a German specialist in otorhinolaryngology and a university professor of otorhinolaryngology at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.

Hans-Dieter Brenner a German businessman and Chief Executive of Helaba Landesbank Hessen-Thüringen.

Anne-Marie Mineur is a Dutch politician who was Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the Netherlands between 2014 and 2019. She is a member of the Socialist Party, part of the European United Left–Nordic Green Left in the European Parliament. Previously Mineur was municipal councillor in De Bilt (2006–2012) and member of the States of Utrecht (2011–2014).

Friedrich Eisenbrand is a German mathematician and computer scientist. He is a professor at EPFL Lausanne working in discrete mathematics, linear programming, combinatorial optimization and algorithmic geometry of numbers.

Niko Beerenwinkel, Ph.D., is a German mathematician who is active in the field of computational biology; he is an associate professor of the ETH Zurich since April 2013.

Gerhard Wack is a German politician. He served as the State Secretary in the Ministry of Finance of the federal state Saarland from 1999 to 2012.

Daniel Kastler was a French theoretical physicist, working on the foundations of quantum field theory and on non-commutative geometry. He is known as the co-developer of the Kadison–Kastler metric and the Haag–Kastler axioms.

Riccardo Pozzo is an Italian philosopher and historian of philosophy.

Christoph Bock is a German bioinformatician and principal investigator at the Research Center for Molecular Medicine of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and a visiting professor at the Medical University of Vienna.

Victor Spinei is Emeritus Professor of history and archaeology at the Alexandru Ioan Cuza University and titular member of the Romanian Academy. He is a specialist on the history of Moldavia and the Moldavian people in the Early and High Middle Ages, the history of migratory peoples in Eastern and Southeastern Europe during this period, and the production and circulation...

Michael Kohlhase is a German computer scientist and professor at University of Erlangen–Nuremberg, where he is head of the KWARC research group (Knowledge Adaptation and Reasoning for Content).

Egon Jüttner is a German educationalist and social scientist, university lecturer and former politician (CDU). He was a member of the German Bundestag for almost 20 years in total and worked in the Mannheim city council for roughly 40 years.

Eric Neumayer is a professor of Environment and Development at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and is Pro-Director of Faculty Development. He holds a Diplom in Economics from Saarland University, a Master of Science and PhD in Development Studies from LSE, awarded by the University of London. In 2003, he was awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize...

Lutz-Georg Stavenhagen was a German politician and member of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU). He was Minister of State in the Foreign Office from 1985 to 1987 and Minister of State in the Federal Chancellery from 1987 to 1991.

Philipp Rudolf Humm is an artist, film director and a former European business executive.

Christoph Georg Hartmann is a German politician who is a member of the Free Democratic Party (FDP). From November 2009 until January 2012, he was the secretary to the Minister-president of Saarland and the Saarland Minister for Economy and Science.

Markus Gross is a Professor of Computer science at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zürich (ETH), head of its Computer Graphics Laboratory, and serves as Chief Scientist at The Walt Disney Studios as well as Director of DisneyResearch|Studios. His research interests include physically based modeling, computer animation, immersive displays, and video technology. He has published more than 430 scientific...

Susanne Albers is a German theoretical computer scientist and professor of computer science at the Department of Informatics of the Technical University of Munich. She is a recipient of the Otto Hahn Medal and the Leibniz Prize.

Marc Daniel Johannes Speicher is a German politician and a member of the Landtag of Saarland.

Tammo tom Dieck is a German mathematician, specializing in algebraic topology.

Werner Günter Adolf Jeanrond was Professor of Systematic Theology with special responsibility for Dogmatics at the University of Oslo. He is retired.

Hiltrud Breyer is a German politician and former Member of the European Parliament with the German Green Party, part of the European Greens and sits on the European Parliament's Committee on Women's Rights and Gender Equality and its Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety.

Ludwig Finscher was a German musicologist. He was a professor of music history at the University of Heidelberg from 1981 to 1995 and editor of the encyclopedia Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart. He is respected internationally as an authority on the history of Western Classical music from the 16th century to contemporary classical music, with a view on music...

Sven Clement is a Luxembourgish politician and MP of the Pirate Party Luxembourg of which he is also one of the founders.

Astrid Lulling is a Luxembourgish politician. She was a Member of the European Parliament (1965–1974 and 1989–2014) for the Christian Social People's Party, part of the European People's Party.

Claus Peter Schnorr was a German mathematician and cryptographer.

Andrey Kovatchev, is a Bulgarian politician, Member of the European Parliament, a federalist and Head of the Bulgarian Delegation in the EPP Group in the European Parliament. Kovatchev is a chairman of the Union of European Federalists in Bulgaria. Since 2011 he has also been its vice-president. In January 2012 he was elected vice-chair of AFET – Committee on Foreign...

Manuela Ripa is a German lawyer and politician of the Ecological-Democratic Party, ÖDP. Since 16 July 2020, she has been a member of the European Parliament. After her reelection in 2024 she switched from the group of the Greens–European Free Alliance to that of the European People's Party Group.

Werner Zeyer was a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) who served as Minister-President of Saarland from 1979 to 1985.

Monika Henzinger is a German computer scientist, and is a former director of research at Google. She is currently a professor at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria. Her expertise is mainly on algorithms with a focus on data structures, algorithmic game theory, information retrieval, search algorithms and Web data mining. She is married to Thomas Henzinger and has...

Thomas Lutze is a German politician who represents the Social Democratic Party of Germany. Previously, he was a member of the Left Party. Thomas Lutze has served as a member of the Bundestag from the state of Saarland from 2009 to 2023, and has represented Berlin since October 2023.

Christian Wirth is a German politician for the Alternative for Germany (AfD) and since 2017 member of the Bundestag.

Jürgen Wilfried Falter is a German political scientist. His research interests include political extremism and xenophobia.

Justus Haucap is a German economist who currently works as Professor of Economics at the University of Düsseldorf, where he directs the Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (DICE). The focus of his research is on competition and antitrust as well as the regulation of network industries and the digital economy. In 2015, Haucap was awarded the Gustav Stolper Prize for...

Ulrich Nußbaum is a German lawyer and politician served as State Secretary at the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy under the leadership of minister Peter Altmaier in the fourth coalition government of Chancellor Angela Merkel from 2018 to 2021.

Guido Kerkhoff is a German business executive. He has been Chairman of the Management Board of Klöckner & Co since 2021. During his tenure, the steel and metal distributor has expanded its existing product and service portfolio to include CO2-reduced steel and metal solutions. Prior to joining Klöckner & Co, Kerkhoff held various management positions at Thyssenkrupp, including Chairman of...

Christian Welzel is a German political scientist at the Leuphana University Lueneburg and director of research at the World Values Survey Association. He is known for the model of cultural dimensions which measures emancipative values and secular values.

Ottmar Schreiner was a German lawyer and left-wing politician. He was known as one of the leading leftists in his party, SPD.

David Bardens is a German doctor whose case was reported internationally in 2015 after the district court of Ravensburg had ruled that he should get the €100,000 prize money that biologist Stefan Lanka had promised to anyone who could provide information about the existence and size of the measles virus. This award was overturned by the Higher Regional Court (Oberlandesgericht)...

Klaus Bouillon is a German politician. He is a member of the CDU. From 1983 to 2014 he was mayor of his town of birth. In 2014 he became Minister of the Interior of the German state of Saarland. In 2016 he was chairman of the Standing Conference of Interior Ministers ("Innenministerkonferenz", IMK) in Germany.

Maria Constança Dias Urbano de Sousa is a Portuguese jurist and the country's former Minister of Internal Administration.

Werner Maihofer OMRI was a German jurist and legal philosopher. He served as Germany's Federal Minister of the Interior from 1974 to 1978 until he resigned after a scandal involving an illegal wiretapping of Klaus Traube.

Reinhard Klimmt is a German politician of the Social Democratic Party (SPD). From 1998 to 1999, he was Minister President of Saarland, and 1999–2000, Federal Minister of Transport, Building and Urban Affairs.

Marie-Monique Robin is a French TV journalist and documentary filmmaker. She generally issues books and documentary films together on the topics she investigates, in order to make more people aware of the issues she studies.

Lars Peter Feld is a German economist who currently serves as director of the Walter Eucken Institut and as Professor for Economic Policy at the University of Freiburg. From 2020 to 2021 he also chaired the German Council of Economic Experts. Federal Minister of Finance Christian Lindner made Feld his personal economic policy advisor in February 2022.

Dame Uta Frith is a German-British developmental psychologist and emeritus professor in cognitive development at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London (UCL). She pioneered much of the current research into autism and dyslexia. Her book Autism: Explaining the Enigma introduced the cognitive neuroscience of autism. She is credited with creating the Sally–Anne test along with fellow scientists...

Nadine Schön is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) who served as a member of the German Parliament from 2009 to 2025, representing the constituency of St. Wendel.

Peter Bofinger is a German economist and a former member of the German Council of Economic Experts.

Gerhard Schindler is a German civil servant and former President of the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), the German Federal Intelligence Service.

Hermann Parzinger is a German historian who is a specialist in the culture of the Scythians. He has been president of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation between 1 March 2008 and 27 May 2025 and the Executive President of Europa Nostra since 2018.

Joseph Leinen is a German politician who served as Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from 1999 until 2019. He is a member of the Social Democratic Party, part of the Party of European Socialists.

Tobias Theodor Hans is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) who served as Minister-President of Saarland from 2018 to 2022.

Markus Heitz is a German fantasy, horror and science fiction author best known for his Dwarves series of novels.

Fedor Holz is a German professional poker player, originally from Saarbrücken, who focuses on high roller tournaments. He was ranked by Pocketfives.com as the best online MTT player in 2014 and 2015. In July 2016, Holz won his first WSOP bracelet, in the $111,111 High Roller For One Drop, winning $4,981,775.

Simone Peter is a German Alliance 90/The Greens politician. Between 2013 and 2018, she co-chaired the party along with Cem Özdemir.

Franz Josef Degenhardt was a German poet, satirist, novelist, and – first and foremost – a folksinger/songwriter (Liedermacher) with decidedly left-wing politics. He was also a lawyer, bearing the academic degree of Doctor of Law.

Peter Aloysius Müller is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) who served as a judge at the German Federal Constitutional Court from 2011 to 2023.

Heiko Josef Maas is a German lawyer and former politician of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) who served as the Federal Minister of Foreign Affairs (2018–2021) and as the Federal Minister of Justice and Consumer Protection (2013–2018) in the cabinet of Chancellor Angela Merkel. Since 2022, he has been practicing as a lawyer.

Peter Altmaier is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) who served as Acting Minister of Finance from 2017 to 2018 and as Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy from 2018 to 2021. He previously served as Federal Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety from May 2012 to December 2013 and Head of the...

Özlem Türeci is a German physician, scientist and entrepreneur. In 2008, she co-founded the biotechnology company BioNTech, which in 2020 developed the first messenger RNA-based vaccine approved for use against COVID-19. Türeci has served as BioNTech's chief medical officer since 2018. Since 2021, she has been Professor of Personalized Immunotherapy at the Helmholtz Institute for Translational Oncology (HI-TRON) and Johannes...

Uwe Conradt is a German Christian Democratic politician who has been serving as Mayor of Saarbrücken since 2019.

Frederic Vester was a German biochemist, and an expert in the field of ecology.

Karl-Otto Apel was a German philosopher and Professor Emeritus at the University of Frankfurt am Main. He specialized on the philosophy of language and was thus considered a communication theorist. He developed a distinctive philosophical approach which he coined transcendental pragmatics.

Friedemann Mattern is a German scientist.

Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, sometimes referred to by her initials of AKK, is a retired German politician who has been serving as chair of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation since 2026. She served as Minister of Defence from 2019 to 2021 and as Leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) from 2018 to 2021.

Anke Gabriele Rehlinger is a German politician of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) serving as the minister-president of Saarland. After her party won the 2022 state elections in Saarland, she became the second female minister-president after Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer and the first from her party. She was previously the deputy minister president of Saarland from 17 December 2013 until her election...

Jasmin Freigang is a German politician who was a member of the Saarland regional parliament from 2012 to 2017, representing the Pirate Party.

Christian Petry is a German politician of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) who has been a Member of the German Bundestag since January 2014, representing constituency 298, St Wendel.

Hans-Hermann Hoppe is a German-American academic associated with Austrian School economics, anarcho-capitalism, right-wing libertarianism, and opposition to democracy. From 1986 until 2008 he was professor of economics at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV). He is a senior fellow of the Mises Institute think tank. In 2006 he emigrated to Turkey and founded the Property and Freedom Society. Some...

August-Wilhelm Scheer is a German Professor of business administration and business information at Saarland University, and founder and director of IDS Scheer AG, a major IT service and software company. He is known for the development of the Architecture of Integrated Information Systems (ARIS) concept.

Ralf Gustav Dahrendorf, Baron Dahrendorf, was a German-British sociologist, philosopher, political scientist and liberal politician. A class conflict theorist, Dahrendorf was a leading expert on explaining and analysing class divisions in modern society. Dahrendorf wrote multiple articles and books, his most notable being Class and Conflict in Industrial Society (1959) and Essays in the Theory of Society (1968).

Heiner Flassbeck is a German economist and public intellectual. From 1998 to 1999 he was a State Secretary in the German Federal Ministry of Finance (German: Bundesministerium der Finanzen) where he also advised former finance minister Oskar Lafontaine on a reform of the European Monetary System. He became the Chief of Macroeconomics and Development of the United Nations Conference on...

Michael Wolffsohn is a German historian.

Markus Alexander Uhl is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) who served as a member of the Bundestag from the state of Saarland from 2017 to 2025. Following his departure from parliament, he returned to a civil service position in Saarland’s State Ministry of the Interior.

Juli Zeh is a German writer and judge. She is known for novels such as The Method (2009), Unterleuten (2016) and About People (2021).

Rita Auma Obama is a Kenyan-British community activist, sociologist, journalist, author, and half-sister of former President of the United States, Barack Obama. Obama serves as the executive chairwoman of Sauti Kuu Foundation (Strong Voices Foundation), a non-profit organisation that helps orphans and other young people struggling with poverty in Kenya.

Volker Wissing is a German lawyer and former judge who served as the Minister for Transport in the federal government of Chancellor Olaf Scholz from 2021 to 2025 and as Minister of Justice from 2024 to 2025.

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