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The Most Famous

INVENTORS from Poland

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This page contains a list of the greatest Polish Inventors. The pantheon dataset contains 354 Inventors, 4 of which were born in Poland. This makes Poland the birth place of the 17th most number of Inventors behind Czechia and Spain.

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.

Photo of Paul Gottlieb Nipkow

1. Paul Gottlieb Nipkow (1860 - 1940)

With an HPI of 64.94, Paul Gottlieb Nipkow is the most famous Polish Inventor.  His biography has been translated into 33 different languages on wikipedia.

Paul Julius Gottlieb Nipkow (22 August 1860 – 24 August 1940) was a German technician 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 Hundreds of stations experimented with television broadcasting using his disk in the 1920s and 1930s, until it was superseded by all-electronic systems in the 1940s.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.

Photo of Gunther von Hagens

2. Gunther von Hagens (1945 - )

With an HPI of 57.82, Gunther von Hagens is the 2nd most famous Polish Inventor.  His biography has been translated into 19 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.

Photo of Ottomar Anschütz

3. Ottomar Anschütz (1846 - 1907)

With an HPI of 52.83, Ottomar Anschütz is the 3rd most famous Polish Inventor.  His biography has been translated into 21 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.

Photo of Kazimierz Prószyński

4. Kazimierz Prószyński (1875 - 1945)

With an HPI of 44.62, Kazimierz Prószyński is the 4th most famous Polish Inventor.  His biography has been translated into 15 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.

Pantheon has 4 people classified as inventors born between 1846 and 1945. Of these 4, 1 (25.00%) of them are still alive today. The most famous living inventors include Gunther von Hagens. The most famous deceased inventors include Paul Gottlieb Nipkow, Ottomar Anschütz, and Kazimierz Prószyński. As of April 2022, 1 new inventors have been added to Pantheon including Kazimierz Prószyński.

Living Inventors

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Deceased Inventors

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Newly Added Inventors (2022)

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Which Inventors were alive at the same time? This visualization shows the lifespans of the 3 most globally memorable Inventors since 1700.