100 Notable alumni of University of Giessen

Julius Stinde, was a German author born at Kirchnüchel in Holstein, the son of a clergyman.

John Stenhouse FRS FRSE FIC FCS was a British chemist. In 1854, he invented one of the first practical respirators.

Ferdinand Fellmann was a German philosopher. After the expulsion of his family in 1946 out of Hirschberg (now Jelenia Góra, Poland), Fellmann grew up in Hamelin, Germany.

Ernst Ludwig Alfred Hegar, aka Alfred Hegar, was a German gynecologist famous for developing new medical tools and techniques. He was born on 6 January 1830 in Darmstadt, Germany and died on 5 August 1914. He was buried in Breisgau.

Ralf Reski 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 Strasbourg (ESBS) and Senior Fellow at the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies.

Johann Karl Ernst Dieffenbach, also known as Ernest Dieffenbach, was a German physician, geologist and naturalist, the first trained scientist to live and work in New Zealand, where he travelled widely under the auspices of the New Zealand Company, returning in 1841–42 and publishing in English his Travels in New Zealand in 1843.

Johann Jacob Dillen Dillenius was a German botanist. He is known for his Hortus Elthamensis ("Eltham Garden") on the rare plants around Eltham, London, and for his Historia muscorum ("History of Mosses"), a natural history of lower plants including mosses, liverworts, hornworts, lycopods, algae, lichens and fungi.

Moritz Pasch was a German mathematician of Jewish ancestry specializing in the foundations of geometry. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of Breslau at only 22 years of age. He taught at the University of Giessen, where he is known to have supervised 30 doctorates.

Angela Friederici is a director at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany, and is an internationally recognized expert in cognitive science, neurobiology, and linguistics. She is the author of over 400 academic articles and book chapters, and has edited 15 books on linguistics, neuroscience, language and psychology.

Friedrich Balduin, Baron von Gagern was a German soldier.

Maximilian Franz August von Forckenbeck (23 October 1821 – 26 May 1892) was a German lawyer and liberal politician who served as Mayor of Berlin from 1878 until his death. His is considered one of the most important mayors of the city because of his prudent governing style during Berlin's rise as the capital of a unified Germany.

Andreas Reinicke is a German diplomat and a former Ambassador to Tunisia. He has been the European Union Special Representative for the Middle East Peace Process. Alberto Oggero, an Italian diplomat, served as his deputy until 31 December 2013. Reinicke was appointed by the Council of the European Union on 23 January 2012, and his mandate was repealed on 1...

Milda Vainiutė was a Lithuanian legal scholar and politician.

Karl von Abel was a Bavarian statesman.

Karl Christian von Langsdorf, also known as Carl Christian von Langsdorff, was a German mathematician, geologist, natural scientist and engineer.

Hermann Friedrich Albert von Ihering was a German-Brazilian zoologist. He was the oldest son of Rudolf von Jhering.

Ulrich K. Preuß teaches Theories of the State at the Hertie School of Governance.

Henry Bence Jones FRS was an English physician and chemist.

Ferdinand Adolf Kehrer was a German gynecologist who was a native of Guntersblum in Rhenish Hesse. He was the father of Ferdinand Adalbert Kehrer (1883–1966), a neurologist and Hugo Ludwig Kehrer (1876-1967), a German art historian.

Karl Georg Friedrich Rudolf Leuckart was a German zoologist and a professor at the University of Giessen and then at Leipzig. He was a pioneer of parasitology research and established the field through a two-volume work on the parasites of humans. He has been called the "father of parasitology". He published a two-volume work on the parasites of humans. He...

Friedrich Gottlieb Welcker was a German classical philologist and archaeologist.

Alexander von Brill was a German mathematician.

Karl Engisch was a German jurist and a Philosopher of Law. He was described by Hans Joachim Hirsch as one of the "outstanding theorists of criminal justice of the century" ("herausragenden Strafrechtstheoretiker des vergangenen Jahrhunderts").

Martin Wagenschein was a science educator who worked in mathematical and scientific didactics.

August Karl Johann Valentin Köhler, was a German professor and early staff member of Carl Zeiss AG in Jena, Germany. He is best known for his development of the microscopy technique of Köhler illumination, an important principle in optimizing microscopic resolution power by evenly illuminating the field of view. This invention revolutionized light microscope design and is widely used in...

George August Samuel of Nassau-Idstein was Graf from 1677, and Prince from 1688 until his death, of Nassau-Idstein. He worked mainly in Wiesbaden.

Moshe Smoira was an Israeli jurist and the first President of the Supreme Court of Israel.

Carl Theodor Georg Philipp Welcker was a German legal scholar, law professor, politician and journalist.

Georg Ludwig Hartig was a German forester. Along with Heinrich Cotta he helped establish scientific forestry in Prussia, serving as the chief forester from 1811 and giving lectures on forestry at the University of Berlin from 1838 where he served as a professor. He established the goals of sustainable forestry and wrote several influential textbook for foresters.

Jürgen Werner Gansel is a German politician. He is a representative of the National Democratic Party of Germany. From 2004 until 2014, he was a member of the Landtag of Saxony.

Marian Theodore Charlotte Heidenreich von Siebold was a German physician. She is regarded as the first gynecologist in Germany. She was the daughter of the physicians Damian and Regina von Siebold and was an early assistant of her parents. She graduated with a degree in obstetrics at the Giessen University in 1817.

Friedrich Christoph Schlosser was a German historian, Professor of History at the University of Heidelberg and a Privy Councillor in Prussia.

Karl Adolf Spieß was a German gymnast and educator who contributed to the development of school gymnastics for children of both sexes in Switzerland and Germany.

Dagmar Schmidt is a German politician of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) who has been serving as a member of the Bundestag, the German parliament, since 2013.

Joachim Jungius was a German mathematician, logician and philosopher of science.

Carl Ernst Heinrich Schmidt, also Karl Genrikhovich Schmidt was a Baltic German chemist from the Livonia Governorate, Russian Empire.

Charles Theodor Christian Friedrich Follen (September 6, 1796 – January 13, 1840) was a German poet and patriot, who later moved to the United States and became the first professor of German at Harvard University, a Unitarian minister, and a radical abolitionist. He was fired by Harvard for his abolitionist statements.

Jacob Volhard 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–Zelinsky halogenation.

Sven Simon is a German law professor and politician who has been serving as a Member of the European Parliament since 2019. He previously taught international and European law at Philipps University of Marburg. In the 2019 European Parliament election he was the lead candidate for the Christian Democratic Union Hessen.

Adolph Strecker was a German chemist who is known primarily for his work with amino acids.

Heike Hänsel is a German politician, representing The Left. Born in Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg, Heike Hänsel served as a member of the Bundestag from the state of Baden-Württemberg from 2005 to 2021.

Benjamin Mazar was a pioneering Israeli historian, recognized as the "dean" of biblical archaeologists. He shared the national passion for the archaeology of Israel that also attracts considerable international interest due to the region's biblical links. He is known for his excavations at the most significant biblical site in Israel: south and south west of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem....

Henri Louis Frédéric de Saussure was a Swiss mineralogist, taxonomist and entomologist specialising in studies of hymenopteroid and orthopteroid insects.

Eduard Heinrich Rudolph David was a German politician. He was an important figure in the history of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and of the German political labour movement. After the German Revolution of 1918–19 he was a Minister without portfolio in the government of Philipp Scheidemann, before becoming Minister of the Interior in June 1919 in the...

Lorenz Heister was a German anatomist, surgeon and botanist born in Frankfurt am Main.

Friedrich Christian Diez was a German philologist. The two works on which his fame rests are the Grammar of the Romance Languages (published 1836–1844), and the Etymological Dictionary of the Romance Languages (1853, and later editions). He spent most of his career at University of Bonn.

Svenja Ilona Hahn is a German politician of the Free Democratic Party (FDP) who has been serving as a Member of the European Parliament since 2019, and as President of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Party since 2024.

Samuel Adler was a leading German-American Reform rabbi, Talmudist, and author.

Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Claus was a German zoologist and anatomist. He was an opponent of the ideas of Ernst Haeckel.

Christian Gottfried Daniel Nees von Esenbeck was a prolific German botanist, physician, zoologist, and natural philosopher. He was a contemporary of Goethe and was born within the lifetime of Linnaeus. He described approximately 7,000 plant species (almost as many as Linnaeus himself). His last official act as president of the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina was to admit Charles...

Kirsten Fründt was a German politician. A member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, she served as Landrat of Marburg-Biedenkopf from 2014 until her death.

Joachim Prinz was a German-American rabbi who was an outspoken activist against Nazism in Germany in the 1930s and later became a leader in the civil rights movement in the United States in the 1960s.

Georg Gottfried Gervinus was a German literary and political historian.

Emil Fuchs was a German theologian, the son of Georg Friedrich Fuchs and Auguste Louise Wilhelmine Lonni Hauss.

Friedrich Ludwig Weidig was a German Protestant theologian, pastor, activist, teacher and journalist. Initially working as a teacher in Butzbach, he then spent a short time as a pastor in Ober-Gleen, a district of Giessen. In what is now Hesse and the Middle Rhine, he was one of the main figures of the Vormärz and a pioneer of the 1848...

Richard von Volkmann was a prominent German surgeon and author of poetry and fiction. Some of his works were illustrated by his son, Hans, a well known artist.

Carl Remigius Fresenius, was a German chemist, known for his studies in analytical chemistry.

Natalie Pawlik is a German politician (SPD). She has been a member of the German Bundestag since 2021 and, since 2025, has served as the Federal Government Commissioner for Migration, Refugees, and Integration as well as Minister of State at the Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs. Prior to that, from 2022 to 2025, she was the Federal Government...

Udo Bullmann is a German politician who has been serving as a member of the European Parliament since 1999. He is a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), part of the Party of European Socialists.

Alexander William Williamson FRS FRSE PCS MRIA was an English chemist. He is best known today for the Williamson ether synthesis.

Ingo Peter Wellenreuther is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) who served as a member of the Bundestag from 2002 to 2021.

Karl Eduard Julius Theodor Rudolf Stammler was an influential German philosopher of law. He distinguished a purely formal concept of law from the ideal, the realization of justice. He thought that, rather than reacting and adjusting the law to economic pressures, the law should be deliberately steered towards the current ideal.

Johann Gottlob Leidenfrost was a German physician and theologian who first described the scientific phenomenon eponymously named the Leidenfrost effect.

Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl was a German professor, journalist, novelist, and folklorist.

Yechiel Yaakov Weinberg was an Ashkenazi Orthodox rabbi, posek ("decisor" of Jewish law) and rosh yeshiva. He is best known as the author of the work of responsa Seridei Eish.

Charles Adolphe Wurtz was an Alsatian French chemist. He is best remembered for his decades-long advocacy for the atomic theory and for ideas about the structures of chemical compounds, against the skeptical opinions of chemists such as Marcellin Berthelot and Henri Étienne Sainte-Claire Deville. He is well known by organic chemists for the Wurtz reaction, to form carbon-carbon bonds by...

Christoph Cellarius (22 November 1638 – 4 June 1707) was a German classical scholar from Schmalkalden who held positions in Weimar and Halle. Although the Ancient-Medieval-Modern division of history was used earlier by Italian Renaissance scholars Leonardo Bruni and Flavio Biondo, Cellarius' Universal History Divided into an Ancient, Medieval, and New Period (1685) helped popularize it. After him, this tripartite...

Theodor Fliedner was a German Lutheran minister and founder of Lutheran deaconess training. In 1836, he and Friederike Fliedner founded the Kaiserswerther Diakonie, a hospital and deaconess training center. They and Caroline Bertheau, are regarded as the renewers of the apostolic deaconess ministry. Their work in nursing was pioneering for Florence Nightingale, who spent a few months in Kaiserswerth in...

Michael Hüther is a German economist who currently serves as director of the Institut der deutschen Wirtschaft. He has previously been the chief economist of DekaBank. Hüther also is an honorary professor at the European Business School International University Schloss Reichartshausen.

Johannes Dieckmann was a German journalist and politician who served as the 1st President of the Volkskammer, the parliament of East Germany, from 1949 to 1969.

René Aust is a German politician of the Alternative for Germany (AfD). He entered the state parliament of Thuringia after the state elections of 27 October 2019. In the 2024 European Parliament election he came third on his party's list and entered the European Parliament.

Johann Heinrich Jakob Müller was a German physicist.

Ludwig Bamberger was a German Jewish economist, politician, revolutionary and writer.

Walther Wilhelm Georg Bothe was a German experimental physicist who shared the 1954 Nobel Prize in Physics with Max Born "for the coincidence method and his discoveries made therewith."

Karl Ludwig Börne was a German-Jewish political writer and satirist, who is considered part of the Young Germany movement.

August Wilhelm von Hofmann was a German chemist who made considerable contributions to organic chemistry. His research on aniline helped lay the basis of the aniline-dye industry, and his research on coal tar laid the groundwork for his student Charles Mansfield's practical methods for extracting benzene and toluene and converting them into nitro compounds and amines. Hofmann's discoveries include formaldehyde,...

Ascanio Sobrero was an Italian chemist, born in Casale Monferrato. He studied under Théophile-Jules Pelouze at the University of Turin, who had worked with the explosive material guncotton.

Ákos Ányos Hadházy is a Hungarian veterinarian, politician and anti-corruption activist. He was co-president of the Politics Can Be Different (Lehet Más a Politika; LMP) party from 2016 to 2018, and has been a member of the National Assembly (MP) from the party's National List since 2016, and an independent representative for Budapest 8th Constituency since 2022.

Nikolaos Kotzias, GCM is a Greek politician and diplomat who served as Minister for Foreign Affairs from 2015 to 2018.

Heinrich Joseph Maximilian Johann Maria von Brentano di Tremezzo, known professionally as Heinrich von Brentano, was a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). He served as Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs from 1955 to 1961.

Ingrid Matthäus-Maier is a German politician of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD).

Thorsten Schäfer-Gümbel is a former German politician of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) who has been serving as member of the management board of GIZ since 2019.

Johann Konrad Dippel, also spelled Johann Conrad Dippel, was a German Pietist theologian, physician, and alchemist.

Elke Büdenbender is a German former judge. She is also the wife of Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the current President of Germany.

Nia Tsholofelo Künzer is a retired German women's football player.

Wilhelm Martin Philipp Christian Ludwig Liebknecht was a German social democratic politician, journalist, and a principal founder of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). His political career was a pioneering project in steering a Marxist-inspired workers' party to electoral success and mass membership. With his long-time political collaborator August Bebel, he was a leading figure in nineteenth-century German socialism....

Brigitte Zypries is a German lawyer and politician of the Social Democratic Party (SPD). Between 2017 and 2018, she served as Minister for Economics and Energy in the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel; she was the first woman to hold that office in German history.

Mariana Harder-Kühnel is a German politician of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. Since October 2017, she has served as member of the Bundestag.

Jürgen Stock is a German police officer and academic. He served as secretary general of Interpol from November 7, 2014 to November 7, 2024. Stock joined the Kriminalpolizei in Hesse in 1978 and stayed on as an officer until 1992. Between 1992 and 1996, he studied criminology at the University of Giessen.

Frank-Walter Steinmeier is a German politician who has served as President of Germany since 2017. He was previously Minister for Foreign Affairs from 2005 to 2009 and again from 2013 to 2017, as well as Vice-Chancellor of Germany from 2007 to 2009. Steinmeier was Chairman-in-Office of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) in 2016.

Eberhardt Alexander Gauland is a German politician, journalist and lawyer who served as leader of the political party Alternative for Germany (AfD) in the Bundestag from September 2017 to 2021, and co-leader of the party from December 2017 to November 2019. He has been the Member of the Bundestag (MdB) for Chemnitz since March 2025, having previously served on the...

Karl Georg Büchner was a German dramatist and writer of poetry and prose, considered part of the Young Germany movement. He was also a revolutionary and the brother of physician and philosopher Ludwig Büchner. His literary achievements, though limited, are generally held in great esteem in Germany. Despite his brief career, his plays profoundly influenced naturalism, expressionism, and later developments...

Harald Lesch is a German physicist, astronomer, natural philosopher, author, television presenter, professor of physics at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU) and professor of natural philosophy at the Munich University of Philosophy.

Volker Bouffier is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) who served as Minister President of the German state of Hessen from 31 August 2010 to 31 May 2022. From 1 November 2014 until 31 October 2015 he was President of the Bundesrat and ex officio deputy to the President of Germany.

Hermann Otto Solms is a German politician of the Free Democratic Party (FDP).

Hans-Jochen Vogel was a German lawyer and a politician for the Social Democratic Party (SPD). He served as Mayor of Munich from 1960 to 1972, winning the 1972 Summer Olympics for the city and Governing Mayor of West Berlin in 1981, the only German ever to lead two cities with a million+ inhabitants. He was Federal Minister of Regional Planning,...

Franz Joseph Emil Fischer was a German chemist. He was the founder and first director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Coal Research. He is known for the discovery of the Fischer–Tropsch process.

Richard August Carl Emil Erlenmeyer, known simply as Emil Erlenmeyer, was a German chemist known for contributing to the early development of the theory of chemical structure and formulating the Erlenmeyer rule. He also designed the Erlenmeyer flask, a specialized apparatus ubiquitous in chemistry laboratories, which is named after him.

Friedrich August Kekulé, later Friedrich August Kekule von Stradonitz, was a German organic chemist. From the 1850s until his death, Kekulé was one of the most prominent chemists in Europe, especially in the field of theoretical chemistry. He was the principal founder of the theory of chemical structure and in particular the Kekulé structure of benzene.