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The Most Famous

INVENTORS from Slovakia

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This page contains a list of the greatest Slovak Inventors. The pantheon dataset contains 354 Inventors, 4 of which were born in Slovakia. This makes Slovakia the birth place of the 18th most number of Inventors behind Spain and Poland.

Top 4

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

Photo of Wolfgang von Kempelen

1. Wolfgang von Kempelen (1734 - 1804)

With an HPI of 61.57, Wolfgang von Kempelen is the most famous Slovak Inventor.  His biography has been translated into 28 different languages on wikipedia.

Johann Wolfgang Ritter von Kempelen de Pázmánd (Hungarian: Kempelen Farkas; 23 January 1734 – 26 March 1804) was a Hungarian author and inventor, known for his chess-playing "automaton" hoax The Turk and for his speaking machine.

Photo of Slavoljub Eduard Penkala

2. Slavoljub Eduard Penkala (1871 - 1922)

With an HPI of 53.25, Slavoljub Eduard Penkala is the 2nd most famous Slovak Inventor.  Her biography has been translated into 18 different languages.

Slavoljub Eduard Penkala (Croatian pronunciation: [slâʋɔʎuːb ɛ̂duard pɛŋkǎːla]; 20 April 1871 – 5 February 1922) was a Croatian engineer and inventor of Dutch-Polish descent.

Photo of Aurel Stodola

3. Aurel Stodola (1859 - 1942)

With an HPI of 51.63, Aurel Stodola is the 3rd most famous Slovak Inventor.  His biography has been translated into 20 different languages.

Aurel Boleslav Stodola (11 May 1859 – 25 December 1942) was a Slovak engineer, physicist, and inventor. He was a pioneer in the area of technical thermodynamics and its applications and published his book Die Dampfturbine (the steam turbine) in 1903. In addition to the thermodynamic issues involved in turbine design the book discussed aspects of fluid flow, vibration, stress analysis of plates, shells and rotating discs and stress concentrations at holes and fillets. Stodola was a professor of mechanical engineering at the Swiss Polytechnical Institute (now ETH) in Zurich. He maintained friendly contact with Albert Einstein. In 1892, Stodola founded the Laboratory for Energy Conversion.

Photo of Jozef Murgaš

4. Jozef Murgaš (1864 - 1929)

With an HPI of 46.77, Jozef Murgaš is the 4th most famous Slovak Inventor.  His biography has been translated into 16 different languages.

Jozef Murgaš (English Joseph Murgas) (17 February 1864 – 11 May 1929) was a Slovak inventor, architect, botanist, painter and Roman Catholic priest. He contributed to radio development, which at the time was commonly known as "wireless telegraphy". Murgaš was nicknamed the Radio Priest and deemed a Renaissance man.

Pantheon has 4 people classified as inventors born between 1734 and 1871. Of these 4, none of them are still alive today. The most famous deceased inventors include Wolfgang von Kempelen, Slavoljub Eduard Penkala, and Aurel Stodola.

Deceased Inventors

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Which Inventors were alive at the same time? This visualization shows the lifespans of the 4 most globally memorable Inventors since 1700.