100 Notable alumni of University of Wroclaw

Heinrich Wilhelm Dove was a Prussian physicist and meteorologist.

Count Kuno Friedrich Viktor von Westarp was a conservative politician in Germany.

Jerzy Janicki was a Polish writer, journalist and scriptwriter. Author of many radio auditions, among them most famous is the radio drama Matysiakowie. He wrote many books about Kresy, particularly about the city of Lwów (now Lviv, Ukraine).

Paul Albert Gordan was a German mathematician known for work in invariant theory and for the Clebsch–Gordan coefficients and Gordan's lemma. He was called "the king of invariant theory". His most famous result is that the ring of invariants of binary forms of fixed degree is finitely generated. Clebsch–Gordan coefficients are named after him and Alfred Clebsch. Gordan also served...

Genowefa Grabowska is a Polish politician and Member of the European Parliament for the Silesian Voivodship with the Social Democracy of Poland, part of the Socialist Group and sits on the European Parliament's Committee on Constitutional Affairs.

Herbert Weichmann was a German lawyer and politician (Social Democratic Party) and First Mayor of Hamburg (1965–1971). In his position as mayor of Hamburg, he served as President of the Bundesrat (1968–1969).

Łukasz Andrzej Kamiński is a Polish historian, specializing in the history of Poland after 1945, particularly the period of Soviet occupation and the Polish People's Republic. He is the President of the European Union's Platform of European Memory and Conscience and formerly served as President of the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) from 2011 to 2016.

Waldemar Andrzej Fydrych "Major" is a Polish activist and founding leader of the Orange Alternative movement in Poland.

Janusz Konrad Dobrosz is a Polish politician. He was elected to the Sejm on 25 September 2005, getting 14,655 votes in 3 Wrocław district as a candidate from the League of Polish Families list.

Johann Georg Turmair, known by the pen name Johannes Aventinus (Latin for "John of Abensberg") or Aventin, was a Bavarian Renaissance humanist historian and philologist. He authored the 1523 Annals of Bavaria, a valuable record of the early history of Germany.

Rafał Andrzej Kubacki is a Polish judoka.

Edmund Bojanowski was a Polish Roman Catholic and the founder of four separate religious congregations. He studied art and literature during his education in Breslau and Berlin before distinguishing himself during a cholera epidemic in which he tended to the ill. Bojanowski founded several orphanages and libraries for the poor and even worked in them to provide for those people....

Urszula Kozioł was a Polish poet and writer. She was a recipient of the Silesius Poetry Award (2011) and the Nike Award (2024).

Heinrich Albertz was a German Protestant theologian, priest and politician of the Social Democratic Party (SPD). He served as Governing Mayor of Berlin (West Berlin) from 1966 to 1967.

Rudolf "Dolf" von Scheliha was a German aristocrat, cavalry officer and diplomat who became a resistance fighter and anti-Nazi who was incorrectly linked to the Red Orchestra espionage group.

Stanisław Tadeusz Huskowski is a Polish politician. He was elected to Sejm on 25 September 2005, getting 12,334 votes in 3 Wrocław district as a candidate from the Civic Platform list.

Wojciech Żukrowski was a Polish prosaist, poet, reporter, essayist and literary critic.

Kurd Lasswitz was a German author, scientist, and philosopher. He has been called "the father of German science fiction". He sometimes used the pseudonym Velatus.

Heinz Hopf was a German mathematician who worked on the fields of dynamical systems, topology and geometry.

Bodo Kox, is a Polish film director, actor, and screenwriter, known for award-winning feature films The Girl from the Wardrobe (2013) and The Man with the Magic Box (2017).

Władysław Augustyn Stasiak was a Polish senior state and local government official.

Barbara Lidia Labuda is a Polish politician, activist, diplomat and philologist. She was elected to the Contract Sejm, and was a member of the Sejm until 1996, when she became a minister in the Chancellery of President Aleksander Kwaśniewski. From 2005 to 2010, she was the Polish ambassador to Luxembourg.

Janusz Walerian Pańko was a Polish lawyer and professor of legal science. An activist of the democratic opposition during the People's Republic of Poland, a member of the Sejm of the Republic of Poland (X term), he died while serving as president of the NIK, Poland's Supreme Audit Office.

Heinrich Gustav Adolf Engler was a German botanist. He is notable for his work on plant taxonomy and phytogeography, such as Die natürlichen Pflanzenfamilien (The Natural Plant Families), edited with Karl A. E. von Prantl.

Johann Dzierzon, or Jan Dzierżon [ˈjan ˈd͡ʑɛrʐɔn] or Dzierżoń [ˈd͡ʑɛrʐɔɲ], also John Dzierzon, was a Polish apiarist who discovered the phenomenon of parthenogenesis in bees.

Leon Kieres is a Polish lawyer and politician. He was the president of the Instytut Pamięci Narodowej (Institute of National Remembrance) (8 June 2000 – 22 December 2005), a judge of the Polish Constitutional Tribunal.

Marcin Rozynek is a Polish rock vocalist, songwriter, and music producer. He has released six albums, two of them recorded with the band Atmosphere. He has also cooperated with Grzegorz Ciechowski.

Józef Pinior is a Polish politician and Member of the European Parliament for the Lower Silesian Voivodship & Opole Voivodship with the Social Democracy of Poland, part of the Socialist Group and sits on the European Parliament's Committee on Development.

Ferdinand Julius Cohn was a German biologist. He is one of the founders of modern bacteriology and microbiology.

Friedrich Karl Rudolf Bergius was a German chemist known for the Bergius process for producing synthetic fuel from coal, Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1931, together with Carl Bosch) in recognition of contributions to the invention and development of chemical high-pressure methods. Having worked with IG Farben during World War II, his citizenship came into question following the war, causing him...

Oscar Troplowitz was a German pharmacist and entrepreneur.

Romuald Szeremietiew is a Polish politician, columnist, habilitated doctor of military sciences and associated professor at the Academy of National Defense and the War Studies Academy. He was a founding member of the Confederation of Independent Poland, an anti-communist, Sanationist independence movement. He became a member of the Sejm in 1997 and served as the Minister of National Defense in...

Klementyna Suchanow [suxa'nɔf] is a Polish author, editor, and activist. She is the co-founder of the women's rights movement All-Poland Women's Strike.

Aleksandra Katarzyna Przegalińska is a Polish philosopher and futurist, specializing in artificial intelligence (AI), human-machine interaction, and digital society. She is a vice-rector for Innovation and AI at Kozminski University in Warsaw, where she also serves as associate professor in the Department of Management in Digital and Networked Societies.

Dawid Bohdan Jackiewicz is a Polish politician, and the former Minister of State Treasury (2015–2016).

Jolanta Beata Fedak was a Polish politician who served as Minister of Labour and Social Policy from 2007 to 2011.

Bogdan Andrzej Zdrojewski [ˈbɔɡdan zdrɔˈjɛfskʲi] is a Polish politician, mayor of Wrocław from 1990 to 2001, and Minister of Culture and National Heritage from 2007 till 2014. He has also been member of the Polish and of the European Parliament.

Jacek Protasiewicz is a Polish politician. Graduated from Wroclaw University where in the 80s of 20th century was a leader of anti communist student organization (NZS). In 1995 was an international fellow at the Kettering Foundation based in Dayton, Ohio. He was a local leader of a liberal party (KL-D) in 1994 and then the Union of Freedom - the...

Robert Kropiwnicki is a Polish politician. He has been a member of the Sejm since 2010 representing the constituency of Legnica. In 2010, he replaced Janusz Mikulicz in the Sejm (6th term) and Kropiwnicki was re-elected in 2011 and in 2015 (7th and 8th term of the Sejm respectively). In 2019 parliamentary election, he was again elected to the Sejm...

Ferdinand Gotthold Max Eisenstein was a German mathematician who made significant contributions to number theory and analysis. Born in Berlin, Prussia, to Jewish parents who converted to Protestantism before his birth, Eisenstein displayed exceptional mathematical talent from a young age.

Jarosław Kuźniar is a Polish television and radio presenter. Connected with TVN and TVN24 from 2010 to 2016 c. He has been the host of TV show X Factor in 2011 and 2012.

Richard Courant was a German-American mathematician. He is best known by the general public for the book What is Mathematics?, co-written with Herbert Robbins. His research focused on the areas of real analysis, mathematical physics, the calculus of variations and partial differential equations. He wrote textbooks widely used by generations of students of physics and mathematics. He is also known...

Michał Witkowski is a Polish novelist.

Johannes Hermann Zukertort was a Polish-born British-German chess master. He was one of the leading world players for most of the 1870s and 1880s, but lost to Wilhelm Steinitz in the World Chess Championship 1886, which is generally regarded as the first World Chess Championship match. He was also defeated by Steinitz in 1872 in an unofficial championship.

Adam Hofman is a Polish public relations professional and a former politician. He graduated with a degree in political science from the University of Wrocław in 2004 and was actively involved in student politics, serving as the chairman of the Student Forum at his university. In 2022 Hofman graduated from Harvard Business School.

Joanna Bator is a Polish novelist, journalist, feminist and academic. She specializes in cultural anthropology and gender studies. She is the recipient of the 2013 Nike Award, Poland's top literature prize.

Anna Elżbieta Zalewska is a Polish politician, and former Minister of National Education, serving 2015 to 2019. Since 2007, Zalewska has been a Member of the Sejm and she has worked there until a transition to the minister.

Marek Krajewski is a Polish crime writer and linguist.

Carl Wernicke was a German physician, anatomist, psychiatrist and neuropathologist. He is known for his influential research into the pathological effects of specific forms of encephalopathy and also the study of receptive aphasia, both of which are commonly associated with Wernicke's name and referred to as Wernicke encephalopathy and Wernicke's aphasia, respectively. His research, along with that of Paul Broca,...

Ferdinand Freiherr von Richthofen, better known in English as Baron von Richthofen, was a German traveller, geographer, and scientist. He is noted for coining the terms "Seidenstraße" and "Seidenstraßen" = "Silk Road(s)" or "Silk Route(s)" in 1877. He also standardized the practices of chorography and chorology.

Jan Franciszek Miodek, is a Polish linguist, a prescriptive grammarian and a professor of Wrocław University. He is regarded as one of the most prominent educators and promoters of the standard Polish language.

Gustav Freytag was a German novelist and playwright.

Adam Asnyk, was a Polish poet and dramatist of the Positivist era.

Kamil Bortniczuk is a Polish politician, member of the VIII and IX Sejm as a member of the Agreement political party, within the Law and Justice parliamentary club as part of the United Right coalition. He represents the Opole constituency. In October 2021 he became the Polish Minister of Sport and Tourism.

Jacek Zbigniew Sutryk is a Polish politician and sociologist. He currently serves as the mayor of the city of Wrocław, Lower Silesian Voivodeship, Poland. In June 2024 he was elected chairman of the Association of Polish Cities.

Karl Ernst Adolf Anderssen was a German chess master. He won the great international tournaments of 1851 and 1862, but lost matches to Paul Morphy in 1858, and to Wilhelm Steinitz in 1866. Accordingly, he is generally regarded as having been the world's leading chess player from 1851 to 1858, and leading active player from 1862 to 1866, although the...

Elżbieta Barbara Witek is a Polish conservative politician of the Law and Justice party. Historian, history teacher by profession. Marshal of the Sejm of the Republic of Poland for the 8th and 9th parliamentary terms from 2019 to 2023.

Grzegorz Juliusz Schetyna is a Polish politician who was Leader of Civic Platform and Leader of the Opposition from 26 January 2016 to 25 January 2020. He has served as Minister of Foreign Affairs of Poland from 2014 to 2015, Marshal of the Sejm from 2010 to 2011, Acting President of Poland 2010, Deputy Prime Minister of Poland from 2007...

Ryszard Henryk Czarnecki is a Polish politician and a former Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from Poland. He is a member of the Law and Justice, part of the European Conservatives and Reformists.

Clara Helene Immerwahr was a German chemist. She was the first German woman to be awarded a doctorate in chemistry from the University of Breslau, and is credited with being a pacifist as well as a "heroine of the women's rights movement". From 1901 until her death from suicide in 1915, she was married to the eventual Nobel Prize-winning chemist...

Charles Proteus Steinmetz was a Prussian-American mathematician and electrical engineer and professor at Union College. He fostered the development of alternating current that made possible the expansion of the electric power industry in the United States, formulating mathematical theories for engineers. He made ground-breaking discoveries in the understanding of hysteresis that enabled engineers to design better electromagnetic apparatus equipment, especially...

Beata Agnieszka Kempa is a Polish politician. She was elected to the Sejm on 25 September 2005, getting 5,378 votes in 3 Wrocław district on the Law and Justice list. From 2015 to 2017, Kempa served as Chief of the Chancellery of the Prime Minister. From 2024 to 2025 advisor to the President of Poland, Andrzej Duda.

Agnieszka Ewa Dziemianowicz-Bąk [aɡˈɲɛʂka d͡ʑɛmjaˈnɔvit͡ʂ bɔŋk] is a Polish social activist and politician representing the New Left party who has served as the Minister of Family, Labour and Social Policy since 2023. She has been a member of the Sejm since 2019.

Anna Wiktoria German-Tucholska was a Polish singer (lirico-spinto), immensely popular in Poland and in the Soviet Union in the 1960s and the 1970s. She released over a dozen music albums with songs in Polish, as well as several albums with Russian repertoire. Throughout her music career, she also recorded songs in the German, Italian, Spanish, English, and Latin languages.

Patryk Tomasz Jaki is a Polish politician, sitting as a Member of the European Parliament since 2019. He is the leader of the European Conservatives and Reformists Group in the European Parliament, and has been vice-president of the Law and Justice party since 2024.

Agnieszka Smoczyńska is a Polish film and television writer and director. She is an alumnus of the Krzysztof Kieślowski Film School in Katowice. Her debut feature film, The Lure (2015), was re-released by The Criterion Collection in 2017, also including the short films Aria Diva (2007) and Viva Maria! (2010). In 2022, she won Golden Lions Award at the Gdynia...

Jarosław Jakub Szymczyk is a Polish police officer in rank of Inspector General, who served as the Commander-in-Chief of Police between 2016 and 2023.

Magdalena Łazarkiewicz, née Holland is a Polish film director and screenwriter.

Grzegorz Michał Braun is a Polish far-right politician and filmmaker. He was a member of the Sejm for Rzeszów from 2019 to 2024 and has been a member of the European Parliament (MEP) for Lesser Poland and Świętokrzyskie since 2024. He has been the chairman of the Confederation of the Polish Crown (abbreviated in Polish as KKP) since 2019.

Kornel Andrzej Morawiecki was a Polish politician, the founder and leader of Fighting Solidarity (Polish: Solidarność Walcząca), one of the splinters of the Solidarity movement in Poland during the 1980s. His academic background was that of a theoretical physicist. He was also a member of the 8th legislature of the Sejm, of which was also the Senior Marshal on 12...

Marek Koterski is a Polish film and theatre director, screenwriter, actor, and playwright.

Apolonia "Pola" Raksa is a Polish movie star, singer, and model who was especially popular in Poland and abroad in the 1960s and 1970s.

Heinrich Graetz was a German exegete and one of the first modern historians to write a comprehensive history of the Jewish people from a Jewish perspective.

Lothar Bolz was an East German politician. From 1953 to 1965 he served as Minister of Foreign Affairs of East Germany (GDR).

Jan Kasprowicz was a Polish poet, playwright, critic and translator; a foremost representative of Young Poland.

Leopold Kronecker was a German mathematician who worked on number theory, abstract algebra and logic, and criticized Georg Cantor's work on set theory. Heinrich Weber quoted Kronecker as having said, "Die ganzen Zahlen hat der liebe Gott gemacht, alles andere ist Menschenwerk" ("God made the integers, all else is the work of man"). Kronecker was a student and life-long friend...

Carl Brockelmann German Semiticist, was the foremost orientalist of his generation. He was a professor at the universities in Breslau, Berlin and, from 1903, Königsberg. He is best known for his multi-volume Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur (first published 1898–1902) ('History of Arabic literature') which included all writers in Arabic to 1937, and remains the fundamental reference volume for all Arabic...

Curt Bräuer was a German career diplomat.

Georg Michaelis was the imperial chancellor of the German Empire for a few months in 1917. He was the first (and, in the German Empire, the only) commoner to hold the post. With an economic background in business, Michaelis' main achievement was to encourage the ruling classes to open peace talks with Russia. Contemplating that the end of the war...

Abraham Fraenkel was a German-born Israeli mathematician. He was an early Zionist and the first Dean of Mathematics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is known for his contributions to axiomatic set theory, especially his additions to Ernst Zermelo's axioms, which resulted in the Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory.

Hans-Georg Gadamer was a German philosopher of the continental tradition, best known for his 1960 magnum opus on hermeneutics Truth and Method (Wahrheit und Methode).

Otto Stern was a German-American experimental physical chemist. He is the second most nominated person for a Nobel Prize, with 82 nominations during the years 1925–1945. In 1943, he received the Nobel Prize in Physics "for his contribution to the development of the molecular ray method and his discovery of the magnetic moment of the proton".

Mateusz Jakub Morawiecki is a Polish economist and politician who served as Prime Minister of Poland from 2017 to 2023. A member of the Law and Justice (PiS) party, he previously served in the cabinet of prime minister Beata Szydło as deputy prime minister from 2015 to 2017, Minister of Development from 2015 to 2018 and Minister of Finance from...

Edward Lasker was a German-American chess and Go player. He was awarded the title of International Master of chess by FIDE. Lasker was an engineer by profession, and an author of books on Go, chess and checkers. Born in Prussia, he emigrated to the United States in 1914. He was distantly related to World Chess Champion Emanuel Lasker with whom...

Wojciech Korfanty was a Polish activist, journalist and politician, who served as a member of the German parliaments, the Reichstag and the Prussian Landtag, and later, in the Polish Sejm. Briefly, he also was a paramilitary leader, known for organizing the Polish Silesian Uprisings in Upper Silesia, which after World War I was contested by Germany and Poland. Korfanty fought...

Martin Wilhelm Kutta was a German mathematician. In 1901, he co-developed the Runge–Kutta method, used to solve ordinary differential equations numerically. He is also remembered for the Zhukovsky–Kutta aerofoil, the Kutta–Zhukovsky theorem and the Kutta condition in aerodynamics.

Erich Mendelsohn; 21 March 1887 – 15 September 1953) was a German-British architect, known for his expressionist architecture in the 1920s, as well as for developing a dynamic functionalism in his projects for department stores and cinemas. Mendelsohn was a pioneer of the Art Deco and Streamline Moderne architecture, notably with his 1921 Mossehaus design.

Lorentzos Mavilis was a Greek sonneteer, war poet, and chess problems composer. He is best known for his sonnets.

Alexander Theodor von Middendorff was a Russian zoologist and explorer of Baltic German and Estonian extraction. He was known for his expedition in 1843–45 to the extreme north and east of Siberia, describing the effects of permafrost on the spread of animals and plants.

Albert Ludwig Sigesmund Neisser was a German physician who discovered the causative agent (pathogen) of gonorrhea, a strain of bacteria that was named in his honour (Neisseria gonorrhoeae).

Max Born was a German–British theoretical physicist 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 number of notable physicists in the 1920s and 1930s. He shared the 1954 Nobel Prize in Physics with Walther Bothe "for his fundamental research in quantum mechanics, especially for...

Paul Johannes Tillich was a German and American Christian existentialist philosopher, religious socialist, and Lutheran theologian who was one of the most influential theologians of the twentieth century. Tillich taught at German universities before immigrating to the United States in 1933, where he taught at Union Theological Seminary, Harvard University, and the University of Chicago.

Georg, Crown Prince of Saxony or George was the last Crown Prince of Saxony and the heir to Frederick Augustus III, the final King of Saxony, at the time of the monarchy’s abolition on 13 November 1918.

Albert Leopold Friedrich Christian Sylvester Anno Macarius, Prince of Saxony, Duke of Saxony, Margrave of Meissen was the second son of Frederick Augustus III, the last reigning king of Saxony before the abolition of the monarchy in 1918. Upon his father's death in 1932, he became the head of the Royal House of Saxony. He was Captain à la suite...

Norbert Elias was a German sociologist who later became a British citizen. He is especially famous for his theory of civilizing/decivilizing processes.

Paul Ehrlich was a German physician and scientist who worked in the fields of hematology, immunology and antimicrobial chemotherapy. He shared the 1908 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Élie Metchnikoff "in recognition of their work on immunity". Among his foremost achievements were finding a cure for syphilis in 1909 and inventing an important modification of the technique for...

Edith Stein OCD was a German philosopher who converted to Catholicism and became a Discalced Carmelite nun. She was murdered in the gas chamber at the Auschwitz II-Birkenau concentration camp on 9 August 1942, and is canonized as a martyr and saint of the Catholic Church; she is also one of six patron saints of Europe.

Christian Ernst Bernhard Morgenstern was a German landscape painter. Morgenstern is regarded as one of the pioneers in Germany of early Realism in painting. He gained this reputation in Hamburg 1826-1829 together with his contemporary Adolph Friedrich Vollmer while both were still studying; from 1830 onwards, Morgenstern, together with Friedrich Wasmann, Johan Christian Dahl and Adolph Menzel, introduced Munich to...

Helmuth James Graf von Moltke was a German jurist who, as a draftee in the German Abwehr, acted to subvert German human-rights abuses of people in territories occupied by Germany during World War II. He was a founding member of the Kreisau Circle opposition group, whose members opposed the government of Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany, and discussed prospects for...