List of Famous people born in Poland
Marian Rejewski
Marian Adam Rejewski was a Polish mathematician and cryptologist who in late 1932 reconstructed the sight-unseen German military Enigma cipher machine, aided by limited documents obtained by French military intelligence. Over the next nearly seven years, Rejewski and fellow mathematician-cryptologists Jerzy Różycki and Henryk Zygalski developed and used techniques and equipment to decrypt the German machine ciphers, even as the Germans introduced modifications to their equipment and encryption procedures. Five weeks before the outbreak of World War II the Poles, at a conference in Warsaw, shared their achievements with the French and British, thus enabling Britain to begin reading German Enigma-encrypted messages, seven years after Rejewski's original reconstruction of the machine. The intelligence that was gained by the British from Enigma decrypts formed part of what was code-named Ultra and contributed—perhaps decisively—to the defeat of Germany.
Izabella Miko
Izabella Miko is a Polish-American actress, dancer, producer, and environmental activist. She is best known for starring in the musical comedy-drama film Coyote Ugly and the music videos "Mr. Brightside" and "Miss Atomic Bomb" by The Killers. While a dance student in Poland, Miko was recruited to study at the New York City Ballet at age fifteen and later studied acting at the Lee Strasberg Institute. She made her American film debut in Coyote Ugly (2000), followed by a starring part in the vampire thriller The Forsaken (2001).
Lotte Jacobi
Lotte Jacobi was a leading American portrait photographer and photojournalist, known for her high-contrast black-and-white portrait photography, characterized by intimate, sometimes dramatic, sometimes idiosyncratic and often definitive humanist depictions of both ordinary people in the United States and Europe and some of the most important artists, thinkers and activists of the 20th century.
Piotr Lisek
Piotr Lisek is a Polish athlete specialising in the pole vault. He won bronze medals at the 2015 and 2019 World Championships and the silver medal at the 2017 World Championships. He is the first Polish vaulter to jump over 6 meters.
Hans-Jürgen Stumpff
Hans-Jürgen Stumpff, was a German general during World War II and was one of the signatories to Germany's unconditional surrender at the end of the war.
Erich Mendelsohn
Erich Mendelsohn was a German architect, known for his expressionist architecture in the 1920s, as well as for developing a dynamic functionalism in his projects for department stores and cinemas. Mendelsohn is a pioneer of the Art Deco and Streamline Moderne architecture, notably with his 1921 Mossehaus design.
Heinrich Philipp August Damerow
Heinrich Philipp August Damerow was a German psychiatrist born in Stettin, Province of Pomerania, Prussia. He made significant contributions in the field of institutional psychiatry.
Piotr S. Wandycz
Piotr Stefan Wandycz was a Polish-American historian. He was also the President of the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America, and professor emeritus at Yale University, specializing in Eastern and Central European history.
Piotr Farfał
Piotr Grzegorz Farfał is a Polish rightwing politician of the League of Polish Families and former President of the Polish national TV network TVP.
Nicolaus Reusner
Nicolaus Reusner was a German jurist and publisher. He was born into a family of wealthy German landowners in Löwenberg, Silesia, who had recently moved there from Transylvania. Several members of his family became famous in the fields of law and medicine in the 16th century, including his brothers Bartholomäus von Reusner, Elias Reusner and Jeremias von Reusner (law). Reusner studied in Wittenberg and Leipzig, under Modestinus Pistoris, and Leonhard Badehorn. In Leipzig, imperial personal physician Georg Wirth (1524–1613) persuaded him to abandon medicine and study law.