100 Notable alumni of University of Wurzburg

Karl Heinrich Emil Koch was a German botanist. He is best known for his botanical explorations in the Caucasus region, including northeast Turkey. Most of his collections have today been lost. He is also known as the first professional horticultural officer in Germany. The standard author abbreviation K.Koch is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a...

Nikolaus Friedreich was a German pathologist and neurologist, and a third generation physician in the Friedreich family. His father was psychiatrist Johann Baptist Friedreich (1796–1862), and his grandfather was pathologist Nicolaus Anton Friedreich (1761–1836), who is remembered for his early description of idiopathic facial paralysis, which would later be known as Bell's palsy.

Hans-Josef Fell is a German former politician who was a member of the German Bundestag from 1998 to 2013. A member of Alliance 90/The Greens, he co-authored the 2000 draft of the Renewable Energy Sources Act alongside Hermann Scheer, establishing the foundation for the technology developments in photovoltaic, biogas, wind power and geothermal energy in Germany. Fell is founder and...

Michael Stolleis was a German jurist and historian. He was a law professor at Goethe University Frankfurt until 2006 and directed the Max Planck Institut für Europäische Rechtsgeschichte of the Max Planck Society from 1991 to 2009.

Oscar Schneider was a German politician (CSU). From 1982 to 1989 he was Federal Minister for Regional Planning, Building and Urban Development.

Park Sang-ki is a South Korean educator, jurist, prosecutor and politician who has served as the Minister of Justice from May 2017 to September 2019 under the cabinet of Moon Jae-in.

Jörg Hinrich Hacker is a German microbiologist. He served as president of the Robert Koch Institute from 2008 to 2010 and of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina from 2010 to 2020. He is the editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Medical Microbiology.

Jacob Ettlinger was an Ashkenazi rabbi and author, and one of the leaders of Orthodox Judaism. He is sometimes referred to as the Aruch la-Ner (ערוך לנר), after his best-known publication.

Anja Weisgerber is a German lawyer and politician. She currently is a member of the German Bundestag representing Schweinfurt for the Christian Social Union in Bavaria (CSU), part of the European People's Party (EPP). She previously served as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for Bavaria. In addition to her political work, she serves as of counsel at the...

Aloysius Matthew Ambrozic was a Slovene Canadian Catholic prelate who served as Archbishop of Toronto from 1990 to 2007. He was made a cardinal in 1998.

Berthold Karl Hölldobler BVO is a German zoologist, sociobiologist and evolutionary biologist who studies evolution and social organization in ants. He is the author of several books, including The Ants, for which he and his co-author, E. O. Wilson, received the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction writing in 1991.

Oskar Gustav Rudolf Hergt was a German lawyer and nationalist politician, who served simultaneously as the minister of Justice and vice-chancellor from 28 January 1927 to 12 June 1928. Hergt attended the prestigious Domgymnasium Naumburg before studying law at Würzburg, Munich and Berlin. He worked as a Gerichtsassessor in Saxony, and as a judge in Liebenwerda. Hergt held various senior...

Johann Jakob von Tschudi was a Swiss naturalist, explorer, and diplomat. He is known for his travels in South America, his scientific contributions to zoology and anthropology, and his diplomatic service for Switzerland.

Teodoro Javier Ribera Neumann is a National Renewal politician and the former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Chile.

Karl Albert Ludwig Aschoff was a German physician and pathologist. He is considered to be one of the most influential pathologists of the early 20th century and is regarded as the most important German pathologist after Rudolf Virchow.

Constantine J. Hering was a physician who was an early pioneer of homeopathy in the United States.

Maximilian Dessoir was a German philosopher, psychologist and theorist of aesthetics.

Clemens Emil Franz Bracht was a German jurist and politician.

Prince Ludwig Philipp Maria Friedrich Joseph Maximilian Antonius Ignatius Lamoral of Thurn and Taxis was a member of the House of Thurn and Taxis and a Prince of Thurn and Taxis by birth.

Karl Ludwig Kahlbaum was a German psychiatrist.

Prince Maximilian William Augustus Albert Charles Gregory Odo of Saxony, Duke of Saxony was a member of the Albertine branch of the House of Wettin and a Catholic priest.

Rudolf Friedrich Johann Heinrich Wagner was a German anatomist and physiologist and the co-discoverer of the germinal vesicle. He made important investigations on ganglia, nerve-endings, and the sympathetic nerves.

Winfried Bausback is a German politician, representative of the Christian Social Union of Bavaria.

Sabine Dittmar is a German physician and politician of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) from the state of Bavaria who has been serving as a member of the Bundestag since 2013.

Friedrich Gerhard Rohlfs was a German geographer, explorer, author and adventurer.

Johann Georg Fuchs von Dornheim was the Prince-Bishop of Bamberg from 1623 to 1633. He was known as the "Hexenbrenner" (witch burner) and the "Hexenbischof" (witch-bishop) for presiding over the most intensive period of witch trials in early modern Bamberg.

Adolf Gaston Eugen Fick 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 Fick.

Heinrich Irenaeus Quincke was a German internist and surgeon. His main contribution to internal medicine was the introduction of the lumbar puncture for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes. After 1874, his main area of research was pulmonary medicine.

Karl Alexander, 5th Prince of Thurn and Taxis, full German name: Karl Alexander Fürst von Thurn und Taxis was the fifth Prince of Thurn and Taxis, head of the Thurn-und-Taxis Post, and Head of the Princely House of Thurn and Taxis from 13 November 1805 until his death on 15 July 1827. With the death of his father on 13...

Theodor Albrecht Edwin Klebs was a German-Swiss microbiologist. He is mainly known for his work on infectious diseases. His works paved the way for the beginning of modern bacteriology, and inspired Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch. He was the first to identify a bacterium that causes diphtheria, which was called Klebs–Loeffler bacterium (now Corynebacterium diphtheriae). He was the father of...

Friedrich Julius Stahl was a German constitutional lawyer, political philosopher and politician.

George Engelmann, also known as Georg Engelmann, was a German-American botanist. He was instrumental in describing the flora of the west of North America, then very poorly known to Europeans; he was particularly active in the Rocky Mountains and northern Mexico, one of his constant companions being another German-American, the botanical illustrator Paulus Roetter.

Johann Friedrich Dieffenbach was a German surgeon. He was born in Königsberg and died in Berlin.

Henry Villard was a German-American journalist and financier who was an influential leader and the sixth president of the Northern Pacific Railway (1881–1884) which completed its trans-continental route during his tenure in 1883.

Iwan Bloch, also known as Ivan Bloch, was a German dermatologist, and psychiatrist, psychoanalyst born in Delmenhorst, Grand Ducal Oldenburg, Germany, and often called the first sexologist.

Alois-Konstantin Fürst zu Löwenstein-Wertheim-Rosenberg, full German name: Alois Konstantin Karl Eduard Joseph Johann Konrad Antonius Gerhard Georg Benediktus Pius Eusebius Maria Fürst zu Löwenstein-Wertheim-Rosenberg is a German businessman and, since 1990, the head of the mediatised House of Löwenstein-Wertheim-Rosenberg, the Catholic cadet line of the Princes of Löwenstein-Wertheim, itself the patrilineally senior but morganatic branch of the royal house of...

Lujo Brentano was a German economist and social reformer.

Isaac Bernays was Chief Rabbi in Hamburg.

Wolfgang Bötsch was a German politician, representative of the Christian Social Union in Bavaria (CSU). Between 1974 and 1976 he represented the Landtag of Bavaria. From 1976 to 2005 he was a member of the Bundestag, and between 1993 and 1997 he was the last Federal Minister of Post and Telecommunications. Bötsch died on 14 October 2017 at the age...

Johann Lukas Schönlein was a German naturalist, and professor of medicine, born in Bamberg. He studied medicine at Landshut, Jena, Göttingen, and Würzburg. After teaching at Würzburg and Zurich, he was called to Berlin in 1839, where he taught therapeutics and pathology. He served as physician to Frederick William IV.

Eduard Lintner is a German politician and lobbyist. From 1976 to 2009 he served as a member of the German Bundestag.

Hartmut Michel is a German biochemist, who received the 1988 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for determination of the first crystal structure of an integral membrane protein, a membrane-bound complex of proteins and co-factors that is essential to photosynthesis.

Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza is a Romanian-born German, Roman Catholic feminist theologian, who is currently the Krister Stendahl Research Professor of Divinity at Harvard Divinity School.

Walter Schottky was a German physicist and electrical engineer who played a major early role in developing the theory of thermionic emission, invented the screen-grid vacuum tube in 1915, co-invented the ribbon microphone and ribbon loudspeaker along with Dr. Erwin Gerlach in 1924, and later made many significant contributions in the areas of semiconductor devices, technical physics, and technology.

Hans Ehard was a German lawyer and politician, a member of the Christian Social Union (CSU) party.

Julius August Döpfner was a German cardinal of the Catholic Church who was elevated to the cardinalate in 1958 and served as Archbishop of Munich and Freising from 1961 until his death.

Johann Joseph Ignaz von Döllinger, also Doellinger in English, was a German theologian, Catholic priest and church historian who rejected the dogma of papal infallibility. Among his writings which proved controversial, his criticism of the papacy antagonized ultramontanes, yet his reverence for tradition annoyed the liberals.

Friedrich August Johannes Loeffler was a German bacteriologist at the University of Greifswald.

Ludwig Schick is a prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as archbishop of Bamberg from 2002 to 2022. He was auxiliary bishop of Fulda from 1998 to 2002.

Eckart Peter Hans von Klaeden is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) who served as Minister of State at the German Chancellery from 2009 to 2013.

Thomas Dehler was a German politician. He was the Federal Republic of Germany's first Minister of Justice (1949–1953) and chairman of Free Democratic Party (1954–1957).

Friedrich Daniel von Recklinghausen was a German pathologist born in Gütersloh, Westphalia. He was the father of physiologist Heinrich von Recklinghausen (1867–1942).

Adolf Philipp Wilhelm Bastian was a 19th-century polymath remembered best for his contributions to the development of ethnography and the development of anthropology as a discipline. His theory of the Elementargedanke resulted in Carl Jung's development of the theory of archetypes. His ideas influenced the "father of American anthropology" Franz Boas and comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell.

Bazon Brock is a German art theorist and critic, multi-media generalist and artist. He is considered a member of Fluxus. He was a professor of aesthetics at the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg, the University of Applied Arts Vienna and the University of Wuppertal.

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...

Tytus Aureliusz Chałubiński was a Polish physician, naturalist, and co-founder of the Polish Tatra Society. His collections of natural history specimens are now held in the Tatra Mountains Museum in Zakopane.

Christine Haderthauer is a German politician and member of the Christian Social Union of Bavaria (CSU) party. She hold several ministerial positions in Bavaria.

Peter-Herbert Frank is a German jurist who is currently serving as a judge in the Federal Constitutional Court in the second senate. Prior to this, he served as Public Prosecutor General and as Attorney General for the Higher Regional Court of Munich.

Dr. Otto Wiesheu is a German politician (CSU) from Bavaria and an expert on traffic.

Hans Karl August Simon Euler-Chelpin, since 28 July 1884 von Euler-Chelpin, was a German-born Swedish biochemist. He won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1929 with Arthur Harden for their investigations on the fermentation of sugar and enzymes. He was a professor of general and organic chemistry at Stockholm University (1906–1941) and the director of its Institute for organic-chemical research...

Karl Heinrich Leopold Deschner was a German researcher and writer who achieved public attention in Europe for his trenchant and fiercely critical treatment of Christianity in general and the Catholic Church in particular, as expressed in several articles and books, culminating in his 10 volume Christianity's Criminal History (Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums, Rowohlt Verlag, Reinbek).

Ludwik Hirszfeld was a Polish microbiologist and serologist. He is considered a co-discoverer of the inheritance of ABO blood types.

Karl August Joseph Maria Maximilian Lamoral Antonius Ignatius Benediktus Valentin, 10th Prince of Thurn and Taxis was the tenth Prince of Thurn and Taxis and Head of the Princely House of Thurn and Taxis from 13 July 1971 until his death on 26 April 1982.

Karl Abraham was an influential German psychoanalyst, and a collaborator of Sigmund Freud, who called him his 'best pupil'.

Hubertus Strughold was a German-born physiologist and medical researcher. Beginning in 1935 he served as chief of aeromedical research for Hermann Göring's Ministry of Aviation and later held the same position with the Luftwaffe throughout World War II. In 1947 he was brought to the United States as part of Operation Paperclip and went on to serve in a number...

Antonio José Brack Egg was an agronomist engineer, an ecologist, and researcher. He was the first Peruvian Minister of the Environment. He is a national and international authority on issues pertaining to biological diversity and biocommercial development. He died after a brief hospitalization in 2014.

Josef Schuster is a German physician and since November 2014 President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany (Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland).

Gustav Nachtigal was a German military surgeon and explorer of Central and West Africa. He is also known as the German Empire's consul-general for Tunisia and Commissioner for West Africa. His mission as commissioner resulted in Togoland and Kamerun becoming the first colonies of a German colonial empire.

Karl August Georg Maximilian Graf von Platen-Hallermünde was a German poet and dramatist. In German he mostly is called Graf (Count) Platen.

Vince Ebert is a German comedian, lecturer, presenter, author, and recipient of a degree in physics.

Klaus von Klitzing is a German physicist, known for discovery of the integer quantum Hall effect, for which he was awarded the 1985 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Safiye Ali or Hatice Safiye Ali was a Turkish physician. She was the first female doctor in the Republic of Turkey. She graduated from the Robert College in Istanbul. She treated soldiers in the Balkan Wars, World War I, and the Turkish War of Independence. She studied medicine in Germany in 1916 and opened her office in Istanbul in 1923.

Wolfgang Michael Gedeon is a German far-right author and former politician of the Alternative for Germany (AfD).

Klaus-Christian Kleinfeld is a German businessman. He worked as the CEO of businesses including Siemens AG, Alcoa Inc, and Arconic.

Peter Heinz Hermann Duesberg was a German-American molecular biologist and a professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley. He is known for his early research into the genetic aspects of cancer. He was a proponent of AIDS denialism, the claim that HIV does not cause AIDS.

Michael von Faulhaber was a German Catholic prelate who served as Archbishop of Munich and Freising for 35 years, from 1917 to his death in 1952.

Georg Theodor Franz Artur Heym was a German writer. He is particularly known for his poetry, representative of early Expressionism.

Karl Paul August Friedrich Liebknecht was a German socialist politician and revolutionary. A leader of the far-left wing of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), Liebknecht was a co-founder of both the Spartacus League and Communist Party of Germany (KPD) along with Rosa Luxemburg.

Jhr. Philipp Franz Balthasar von Siebold was a German physician, botanist and traveller. He achieved prominence by his studies of Japanese flora and fauna. He was the father of the first female Japanese doctor educated in Western medicine, Kusumoto Ine.

Ernst Simon Bloch was a German Marxist philosopher. Bloch was influenced by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Karl Marx, as well as by apocalyptic and religious thinkers such as Thomas Müntzer, Paracelsus, and Jacob Böhme. He established friendships with György Lukács, Bertolt Brecht, Kurt Weill, Walter Benjamin, and Theodor W. Adorno. Bloch's work focuses on an optimistic teleology of the...

Theodor Waigel is a German politician of the Christian Social Union in Bavaria (CSU). He represented Neu-Ulm in the Bundestag from 1976 to 2002.

Emil Wilhelm Georg Magnus Kraepelin was a German psychiatrist. H. J. Eysenck's Encyclopedia of Psychology identifies him as helping to lay the foundation for modern scientific psychiatry, psychopharmacology and psychiatric genetics.

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 a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, a co-founder of the Russian Geographical Society, and the first president of the Russian Entomological Society, making...

Wilhelm Carl Werner Otto Fritz Franz Wien was a German physicist who used theories about heat and electromagnetism to deduce Wien's displacement law, which calculates the emission of a blackbody at any temperature from the emission at any one reference temperature.

Thomas Bach is a German lawyer, former foil fencer, and Olympic gold medalist. He served as the ninth president of the International Olympic Committee from 2013 to 2025. He was the first ever Olympic champion to be elected to that position. Since 2025, he has served as Honorary President of the International Olympic Committee. Bach is also a former German...

Rudolf Ludwig Carl Virchow was a German physician, anthropologist, pathologist, prehistorian, biologist, writer, editor, and politician. He is known as "the father of modern pathology" and as the founder of social medicine, and to his colleagues, the "Pope of medicine".

Johann Baptist Ritter von Spix was a German biologist. From his expedition to Brazil, he brought to Germany a large variety of specimens of plants, insects, mammals, birds, amphibians and fish. They constitute an important basis for today's National Zoological Collection in Munich. Numerous examples of his ethnographic collections, such as dance masks and the like, are now part of...

Hendrik Hoppenstedt is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) who has been serving as a member of the German parliament Bundestag since 2013, representing the Hannover-Land I constituency. Before he got elected in 2013, he was mayor of the city of Burgwedel in the northern German state of Lower Saxony.

Johann Michael Friedrich Rückert was a German poet, translator, and professor of Oriental languages.

Julius Lothar Meyer was a German chemist. He was one of the pioneers in developing the earliest versions of the periodic table of the chemical elements. The Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev (his chief rival) and he both had worked with Robert Bunsen. Meyer never used his first given name and was simply known as Lothar Meyer throughout his life.

Franz Clemens Honoratus Hermann Josef Brentano was a German philosopher and psychologist. His 1874 Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, considered his magnum opus, is credited with having reintroduced the medieval scholastic concept of intentionality into contemporary philosophy.

Alois Alzheimer was a German psychiatrist, neuropathologist and colleague of Emil Kraepelin. He is credited with identifying the first published case of "presenile dementia", which Kraepelin later identified as Alzheimer's disease.

Lorenz Oken was a German naturalist, botanist, biologist, and ornithologist. He became a professor of natural history at the University of Jena and from 1833 at the newly founded University of Zurich. He founded the journal Isis.

Bernhard Weiss was a German lawyer and Vice President of the Berlin police during the Weimar Republic. A member of the liberal Deutsche Demokratische Partei, Weiss was known as a key player in the political tensions during the Weimar Republic and a staunch defender of parliamentary democracy against extremists on the left and right.

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...

Jean-Marc Joseph Marcel Ayrault is a French politician who served as Prime Minister of France from 15 May 2012 to 31 March 2014. He later was Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2016 to 2017. He previously was Mayor of Nantes from 1989 to 2012 and led the Socialist Party group in the National Assembly from 1997 to 2012.

Bogdan Dimitrov Filov was a Bulgarian archaeologist, art historian and politician. He was prime minister of Bulgaria during World War II. During his tenure, Bulgaria became the seventh nation to join the Axis powers.

Theodor Schwann was a German physician and physiologist. His most significant contribution to biology is considered to be the extension of cell theory to animals. Other contributions include the discovery of Schwann cells in the peripheral nervous system, the discovery and study of pepsin, the discovery of the organic nature of yeast, and the invention of the term "metabolism".

Walther Hermann Nernst ForMemRS was a German physical chemist known for his work in thermodynamics, physical chemistry, electrochemistry, and solid-state physics. His formulation of the Nernst heat theorem helped pave the way for the third law of thermodynamics, for which he won the 1920 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He is also known for developing the Nernst equation in 1887.