Johannes GutenbergKarl BenzNikolaus OttoKarl Ferdinand Braun
Werner von SiemensWilhelm MaybachKarl DraisKonrad Zuse

The Most Famous

Inventors from Germany

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This page contains a list of the greatest Germans Inventors. The pantheon dataset contains 426 Inventors, 46 of which were born in Germany. This makes Germany the birth place of the 3rd most number of Inventors behind United States and United Kingdom.

Top 10 German Inventors

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the top 10 most legendary Germans Inventors of all time. This list of famous Germans Inventors is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography's online popularity. Visit the rankings page to view the entire list of Germans Inventors.

  1. #1
    Photo of Johannes Gutenberg

    Johannes Gutenberg

    1394 - 1468

    HPI 90.58160 langs

    Johannes Gutenberg is most famous for inventing the printing press in the 1400s.

  2. #2
    Photo of Karl Benz

    Karl Benz

    1844 - 1929

    HPI 88.12110 langs

    Karl Benz is most famous for inventing the first car that was powered by an internal combustion engine.

  3. #3
    Photo of Nikolaus Otto

    Nikolaus Otto

    1832 - 1891

    HPI 79.9362 langs

    Nikolaus Otto is most famous for his invention of the four-stroke internal combustion engine.

  4. #4
    Photo of Karl Ferdinand Braun

    Karl Ferdinand Braun

    1850 - 1918

    HPI 77.5793 langs

    Karl Ferdinand Braun was a German physicist and inventor who is most famous for being the first person to invent the cathode-ray tube.

  5. #5
    Photo of Hans Lippershey

    Hans Lippershey

    1570 - 1619

    HPI 76.7742 langs

    Hans Lippershey is most famous for inventing the telescope.

  6. #6
    Photo of Werner von Siemens

    Werner von Siemens

    1816 - 1892

    HPI 75.8460 langs

    Werner von Siemens is most famous for inventing the dynamo, which is an electric generator that produces electricity.

  7. #7
    Photo of Wilhelm Maybach

    Wilhelm Maybach

    1846 - 1929

    HPI 73.5940 langs

    Wilhelm Maybach is most famous for designing the first internal combustion engine to be used in a car.

  8. #8
    Photo of Karl Drais

    Karl Drais

    1785 - 1851

    HPI 73.0246 langs

    Karl Drais is most famous for inventing the first bicycle.

  9. #9
    Photo of Konrad Zuse

    Konrad Zuse

    1910 - 1995

    HPI 72.6260 langs

    Konrad Zuse is most famous for inventing the first working computer, the Z3.

  10. #10
    Photo of Adam Opel

    Adam Opel

    1837 - 1895

    HPI 71.8038 langs

    Adam Opel AG is a German automobile manufacturer headquartered in Rüsselsheim, Hesse, Germany. It was founded in 1862 by Adam Opel.

People by Birth Decade

Browse notable Germans Inventors grouped by birth decade. Each decade shows the top 10 by HPI; expand to see everyone.

Overlapping Lives

Which Inventors were alive at the same time? This visualization shows the lifespans of the 25 most globally memorable Inventors since 1700.

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