Famous Austrian Scientists

Hailed as one of the greatest logicians since Aristotle, Kurt Gödel was Austrian-born American mathematician, logician, and philosopher, who earned international stardom for his incompleteness theorem. Also credited with developing a technique called Gödel numbering, he later started working on Mathematical Platonism, a philosophical theory that failed to attract wide acceptance.

A scientist, meteorologist, mathematician, and biologist, Gregor Mendel is considered the founder of the modern science of genetics. He conducted a series of experiments on pea plants between 1856 and 1863, establishing many rules of heredity. Besides his work on pea plants, he also described novel plant species and conducted experiments with hawkweed and honeybees.

Nobel Prize-winning Austrian physicist Wolfgang Pauli is remembered for his contribution to quantum physics and for laying down the Pauli principle. While he was initially married to a cabaret dancer, the marriage ended in a divorce after a year. His written works are considered classics in science.

Austrian-British philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein is remembered for his works related to logic, the philosophy of mind, the philosophy of mathematics, and the philosophy of language. He taught at the University of Cambridge for many years. He published only one book during his lifetime. Most of his manuscripts were collected later and published posthumously.

Austrian physicist and philosopher, Ludwig Boltzmann, played a key role in the development of statistical mechanics. As a young man, he was appointed a professor of mathematical physics at the University of Graz. He worked extensively with other physicists over the course of his brilliant academic career. He suffered from bipolar disorder and died by suicide in 1906. 

Nobel Prize-winning Austrian zoologist Konrad Lorenz is remembered as a pioneer of ethology. The son of a surgeon father and a physician mother, Lorenz was a qualified physician himself. A university degree awarded to him was rescinded posthumously due to his association with the Nazi party

Edmund Husserl was a German philosopher of Moravian origin. He established the school of phenomenology. He studied mathematics, physics, and astronomy at the University of Leipzig and worked as an assistant to mathematician Karl Weierstrass. He later became a professor of philosophy and taught for several years. He is considered a major figure in 20th-century philosophy.  

Austrian physicist and philosopher Ernst Mach is remembered for his contributions to the study of shock waves. He is also credited for discovering a non-acoustic function of the inner ear that helps control human balance. As a philosopher of science, he is considered a major influence on logical positivism and American pragmatism. 

Born in Budapest, Nobel Prize-winning biochemist Albert Szent-Györgyi shot himself in the arm while serving in World War II, so that he could be sent back home, and then studied medicine. While he is remembered for first isolating vitamin C, unknown to many, he was also a skilled pianist.

Christian Doppler was an Austrian physicist and mathematician best remembered for describing a phenomenon which came to be known as the Doppler effect. The color of binary stars was explained by Doppler with the help of the Doppler effect. Christian Doppler's discovery of the Doppler effect is considered an important contribution to physics.

Paul Ehrenfest was an Austrian-Dutch theoretical physicist. A close associate of Albert Einstein, whom he had met during his visit to Prague in 1912, Ehrenfest frequently hosted Einstein in Leiden where he was serving as a professor. Paul Ehrenfest is best remembered for his work in the field of statistical mechanics.

Austrian forest caretaker, naturalist, pseudoscientist, biomimicry experimenter, inventor and philosopher, Viktor Schauberger came up with his own concepts based on his observations of nature. He mentioned in the Implosion magazine that the propeller was incorrectly designed by the aeronautical and marine engineers.

Nobel Prize-winning ethologist Karl von Frisch is best remembered for his research on communication among bees. He was the first to observe that bees communicate the location of food to other bees by a form of “dance.” He penned down his studies in books such as The Dancing Bees.

Anton Zeilinger, a noted Austrian quantum physicist who mostly researches in the area of fundamental aspects and applications of quantum entanglement, was conferred with the Inaugural Isaac Newton Medal by the Institute of Physics for his significant contributions in the field. He presently serves as Senior Scientist at the IQOQI and as professor of physics at the University of Vienna.

Austrian-American physicist and University of Virginia environmental sciences professor Fred Singer was one of the first to deny the harmful effects of global warming and second-hand smoking. He co-authored books such as Climate Change Reconsidered and pioneered numerous studies on space research and atmospheric physics. He also established the SEPP.

Austrian-British mathematician and Imperial College London professor Martin Hairer specializes in stochastic analysis and is a master of pure and applied math and theoretical physics. The Fermat Prize and Fields Medal winner also designs an audio editing software for Macintosh and is a Fellow of the Royal Society.

Austrian-Canadian biologist Ludwig von Bertalanffy is best remembered as one of the pioneers of the general systems theory (GST). While he initially studied philosophy and history, he later switched to biology. It is believed his allegiance to the Nazi Party helped him become a professor at the University of Vienna.

Richard von Mises was an Austrian Jewish scientist and mathematician. He is known for his work on solid mechanics, aerodynamics, aeronautics, fluid mechanics, and probability theory. He was the Gordon McKay Professor of Aerodynamics and Applied Mathematics at Harvard University. He is the one who proposed the now-famous "birthday problem" in probability theory. He was married to mathematician Hilda Geiringer.  

Considered a pioneer in the field of abstract algebra, Austro-German mathematician Emil Artin reached great heights in academics in spite of losing his father to syphilis at age 8. He's best remembered for his contribution to the class field theory and his theorems and concepts such as the Artin rings.

The pioneer of soil mechanics, Karl Terzaghi was the son of an army lieutenant-colonel and studied in a military boarding school, where he developed his passion for geography. He eventually graduated as a mechanical engineer. He later also taught at MIT and penned iconic works such as Erdbaumechanik.

Nobel Prize-winning Austrian-American theoretical chemist Martin Karplus has been associated with Harvard University as a professor of chemistry. The Vienna-born scientist had escaped the Nazis to move to the US. Best known for developing multiscale models for complex chemical systems, he has also worked at Columbia University and the University of Strasbourg.

Walter Kohn was an Austrian-American theoretical physicist and theoretical chemist. He and fellow theoretical chemist John Pople were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1998. Kohn made a major contribution to the development of density functional theory. He had an illustrious academic career and was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. 

Molecular biologist Max Perutz won a Nobel Prize for his research on the structure of hemoglobin. While working at Cambridge, he co-founded the Medical Research Council Unit for Molecular Biology. He also studied glaciers and their velocity distribution. He was also made a Fellow of the Royal Society.

Pioneering Austrian diver Hans Hass was a skilled marine biologist and underwater filmmaker who was considered one of the first to film marine life such as coral reefs, stingrays, and sharks. Known for his award-winning documentary Under the Red Sea, he also personally investigated the disappearance of prime minister Harold Holt at Portsea.

Best known for originating the Stefan-Boltzmann law, Josef Stefan was an Austrian physicist, who published nearly eighty scientific papers in his life time. Starting his career as a lecturer in mathematical physics at University of Vienna, he rose to become director of Physical Institute, meanwhile empirically deriving the Stefan-Boltzmann law, thus paving the way for further work on blackbody radiation.

Austrian chemist and engineer Carl Auer, Freiherr von Welsbach isolated neodymium and praseodymium from didymium. His inventions include the gas mantle and ferrocerium "flints" that are used in lighters. He also worked on the tungsten filament that led to the development of the modern light bulb.

Having lost his doctor father to an execution after he was charged with stealing from his patients, Georg Joachim Rheticus ditched his paternal surname. The Austrian-born mathematician is best remembered for his tables of trigonometric functions. He was also one of the first to propagate the Copernican heliocentric theory.

Austrian botanist and agronomist Erich von Tschermak is remembered for his research on seed breeding and his illustrious teaching career at the Academy of Agriculture. He studied the garden pea extensively and developed disease-resistant variants of wheat and oats. He was also part of the Royal Swedish Academy of Agriculture.

Richard Adolf Zsigmondy was an Austrian-born chemist. He is best remembered for winning the 1925 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his research in colloids. Richard Adolf Zsigmondy is also credited with co-inventing the slit-ultramicroscope.

Herman Francis Mark was an Austrian-American chemist. He is best remembered for his immense contributions to the progression of polymer science. He is also remembered for formulating an equation along with Houwink: the Mark–Houwink equation. Herman Francis Mark was the recipient of several prestigious awards, such as the National Medal of Science, Harvey Prize, and William H. Nichols Medal.

Nobel Prize-winning Slovenian-Austrian chemist conducted path-breaking research on the microanalysis of organic compounds. He modified the combustion train method of elemental analysis. He was associated with the Medico-Chemical Institute for most of his career and had also worked at the universities of Graz and Innsbruck.

Born to a mathematician, Wilhelm Blaschke followed in his father’s footsteps and revolutionized the field of differential and integral geometry. A math professor, he worked extensively on kinematic mapping and is remembered for his iconic works such as Circle and Sphere and Foundations of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.

Georg von Peuerbach was an Austrian mathematician and astronomer, best known for reviving the views of the second-century astronomer, Ptolemy. Possibly educated in humanities, he later established a solid reputation in mathematics and astronomy, writing New Theories of the Planets. Published in 1454, it later became a university textbook, appearing in fifty Latin and vernacular editions by late 17th century.