Famous People Born In Warsaw

Considered one of the best football players in the world, Robert Lewandowski plays for Bundesliga club Bayern Munich and leads the Poland national team as its captain. Known for his exceptional goal scoring ability and striking skills, Lewandowski has earned several accolades including Polish Player of the Year title for eight consecutive years. Besides, he is also a venture capitalist.

Noted mathematician and polymath, Benoit B. Mandelbrot is perhaps best known for his work on fractal. He not only coined the term, but also used computer-constructed images to illustrate the mathematical definition. Also credited with the discovery of Mandelbrot set and Mandelbrot law, he established that even those things which were apparently chaotic or rough had a "degree of order".

Kazimierz Pułaski was a Polish nobleman, military commander, and soldier. Dubbed the father of the American cavalry, Pulaski is credited with creating the Pulaski Cavalry Legion and reorganizing the American cavalry. He played an important role in the American Revolutionary War and is remembered for fighting for the independence of Poland and the United States.

Although he studied math at the University of Warsaw, Witold Lutoslawski also earned diplomas in composition and piano. He grew up to be one of the finest Polish composers and was often compared to Chopin. Known for combining neoclassical and folk elements in his music, he later won a Grammy.

Konstantin Rokossovsky was a Soviet and Polish officer. One of the most important Red Army commanders during the Second World War, Rokossovsky also served as Poland's Defence Minister from 1949 to 1956. He also served as the Marshal of Poland and as the Marshal of the Soviet Union.

A reputed Polish doctor, Henryk Goldszmit was better known by his pseudonym, Janusz Korczak, which he used to write several children’s books. Apart from working as a pediatrician and a military doctor, he also owned a Jewish orphanage and stayed with the children while the Germans deported him and other staff to Treblinka.

Margo Dydek was a Polish basketball player best remembered for her towering height of 7 ft 2 in, which made her the world's tallest professional female basketballer. She played for several teams in the WNBA and was honored with the Polish Gold Cross of Merit in 1999. In 2019, Dydek was inducted into the FIBA Hall of Fame.

Slavomir Rawicz was a Polish Army lieutenant. He was imprisoned by the NKVD after the German-Soviet invasion of Poland and eventually made a miraculous escape, according to his own accounts. However, several authorities have questioned the veracity of his claims. After the war, he settled in England, married and raised a family. He later became a technician.  

Born Benzion Mileikowsky, he became Benzion Netanyahu when at the age of ten he moved to Mandate Palestine with his parents. A scholar of Judaic history, he was also an encyclopedist and actively involved with the Revisionist Zionism movement, lobbying for the creation of the Jewish state. One of his sons, Benjamin Netanyahu, later became the Prime Minister of Israel.

Anna Held was a Polish singer and stage performer. Although her personal life and relationship with Florenz Ziegfeld overshadowed her professional career, Anna Held's uninhibited style inspired the popular theatrical revue productions on Broadway, The Ziegfeld Follies. Her relationship with Florenz Ziegfeld also inspired films like The Great Ziegfeld and Ziegfeld: The Man and His Women.

Polish composer and pianist André Tchaikowsky started his concert career as a student. A great admirer of Shakespeare, Tchaikowsky‘s compositions include the settings of seven of Shakespeare's Sonnets, the opera titled The Merchant of Venice, and songs from The Tempest. According to his wishes, Tchaikowsky’s skull has been used as a theatrical prop by the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Born into a family of rabbis in Warsaw, Abraham Joshua Heschel managed to move to London before Germany’s invasion of Poland but lost his mother and sisters to the Holocaust. The theologian eventually set base in New York, where he continued his work on Jewish philosophy and American civil rights.

Polish-American Gestalt psychologist Solomon Asch, a pioneer in social psychology, is known for his seminal work in social psychology, including social influence, impression formation, conformity and prestige suggestion. He is noted for the Asch conformity experiments or the Asch paradigm, a series of studies in which he demonstrated the influence of group pressure on opinions.  

Hilary Koprowski was a Polish virologist and immunologist. He spent the majority of his career in USA and created an effective live polio vaccine. He also contributed significantly to the development of an improved rabies vaccine. He was the author or co-author of over 875 scientific papers. He was the recipient of many awards, including the Albert Sabin Gold Medal.

Polish mathematician Alfred Tarski initially taught at Warsaw and later moved to the US, where he joined the University of California, Berkeley. Known for his research on topics such as algebra, logic, and set theory, he has also been the doctoral supervisor of mathematicians such as Julia Robinson and Bjarni Jónsson.

Apart from being the wife of Prince Alexander of Hesse, Julia, Princess of Battenberg, was also the daughter of German-Polish general Hans Moritz Hauke. Her lack of royal descent was a matter of concern initially, but Alexander eventually married the 6-month pregnant Julia he had fallen in love with.

Andrzej Bogucki was a Polish actor, operetta singer, and songwriter. He is best remembered for his efforts to save the life of Polish Jewish pianist Władysław Szpilman during World War II when Poland was occupied by the Nazis. Andrzej Bogucki and his wife were honored with the Righteous Among the Nations award in 1978 for their actions during the war.

Polish-American scholar Alfred Korzybski had initially been sent to the U.S. by the Russian intelligence services. After the fall of the tsarist rule, he stayed back in the U.S. The pioneer of general semantics, he believed human knowledge is shaped by one’s linguistic reach and the nervous system.

A Polish-Swedish singer, Dominika Peczynski is known for her association with the dance-pop group Army of Lovers. She also briefly joined another musical group called Nouveau Riche. Apart from being a singer, she has also been a model, a host for her own travel show in UK called Dominika's Planet and the presenter of the Swedish version of Temptation Island. 

Former president of Poland Lech Kaczyński had also served as the mayor of Warsaw. Son of an engineer father and a philologist mother, he had starred in a movie as a child actor, along with his twin brother. A qualified lawyer, he had initially been part of anti-communist underground movements.

Polish author, painter, and dramatist Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz of the Awangarda Krakowska movement was part of the Australian expedition of anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski, as an artist. He had also worked in the Russian Army. He committed suicide at the onset of World War II, though many believe he had faked his own death.

Joseph Rotblat was a physicist remembered for his work on the Manhattan Project at the Los Alamos Laboratory during World War II. He left the laboratory on grounds of conscience and his work on nuclear fallout played a key role in the events preceding the 1963 Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. In 1995, Joseph Rotblat won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Tomasz Wroblewski is a Polish musician best known for his association with the popular black-death metal band Behemoth where he performs as the bassist and backing vocalist. Since 1991, Behemoth has played a major role in establishing the extreme metal underground in Poland. Tomasz Wroblewski is also credited with founding the popular stoner rock/heavy metal band Black River.

Janusz Korwin-Mikke is a Polish politician, author, and paleolibertarian. He is credited with founding the Eurosceptic and right-wing libertarian political party Wolność. Counted among the most controversial politicians of his time, Korwin-Mikke is known for his absurd remarks and allegations. Janusz Korwin-Mikke became a member of the Sejm in 2019.

One of the pioneering figures of the Polish school of mathematics, Wacław Sierpiński made revolutionary contributions to point-set topology. He withheld an award-winning essay on number theory, so that it could be printed in Polish instead of Russian. He spent most of his life teaching at the University of Warsaw.

Wanda Landowska was a Polish pianist and harpsichordist who is credited with reinvigorating the popularity of the harpsichord through her performances, writings, teaching, and recordings in the early 20th century. In 1933, Wanda Landowska became the first person to record Goldberg Variations, which were originally composed by Johann Sebastian Bach for keyboard, on the harpsichord.