INVENTORS from Poland

Top 4

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the most legendary Polish Inventors of all time. This list of famous Polish Inventors is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity.

1. Paul Gottlieb Nipkow (1860 - 1940)

With an HPI of 64.46, Paul Gottlieb Nipkow is the most famous Polish Inventor.  His biography has been translated into 35 different languages on wikipedia.

Paul Julius Gottlieb Nipkow (22 August 1860 – 24 August 1940) was a German electrical engineer and inventor. He invented the Nipkow disk, which laid the foundation of television, since his disk was a fundamental component in the first televisions. Hundreds of stations experimented with television broadcasting using his disk in the 1920s and 1930s, until it was superseded by all-electronic systems in the 1940s. Nipkow has been called the "father of television", together with other early figures of television history like Karl Ferdinand Braun. The first regular television service in the world, Fernsehsender Paul Nipkow, was named in his honour.

2. Gunther von Hagens (b. 1945)

With an HPI of 59.11, Gunther von Hagens is the 2nd most famous Polish Inventor.  His biography has been translated into 20 different languages.

Gunther von Hagens (born Gunther Gerhard Liebchen; 10 January 1945) is a German anatomist, businessman and lecturer. He developed the technique for preserving biological tissue specimens called plastination. Von Hagens has organized numerous Body Worlds public exhibitions and occasional live demonstrations of his and his colleagues' work, and has traveled worldwide to promote its educational value. The sourcing of biological specimens for and the commercial background of his exhibits has been controversial.

3. Ottomar Anschütz (1846 - 1907)

With an HPI of 52.60, Ottomar Anschütz is the 3rd most famous Polish Inventor.  His biography has been translated into 22 different languages.

Ottomar Anschütz (16 May 1846, in Lissa – 30 May 1907, in Berlin) was a German inventor, photographer, and chronophotographer. He is widely seen as an early pioneer in the history of film technology. At the Postfuhramt in Berlin, Anschütz held the first showing of life sized pictures in motion on 25 November 1894.

4. Kazimierz Prószyński (1875 - 1945)

With an HPI of 46.31, Kazimierz Prószyński is the 4th most famous Polish Inventor.  His biography has been translated into 16 different languages.

Kazimierz Prószyński (4 April 1875 – 13 March 1945) was a Polish inventor active in the field of cinematography. He patented his first film camera, called Pleograph, before the Lumière brothers, and later went on to improve the cinema projector for the Gaumont company. He was also the inventor of the widely used first hand-held Aeroscope camera.