List of people from Prague

Prague, the capital of today's Czech Republic, has been for over a thousand years the centre and the biggest city of the Czech lands. Notable people who were born or died, studied, lived or saw their success in Prague are listed below.

Portrait of Rudolf II

Portrait of a young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Monument to Franz Kafka (Prague, August 2004)

Art novo picture of Alfons Mucha

The arts

• H. G. Adler (1910–1988) — German-language writer; born and lived in Prague
• Filip Albrecht (born 1977) — lyricist, film producer, writer; lives in Prague
• Jana Andrsová (born 1939) — actress and ballerina; born and lives in Prague
• Lída Baarová (1914–2000) — actress; lived and died in Prague
• Max Brod (1884–1968) — German-language writer; born and lived in Prague
• Karel Čapek (1890–1938) — writer; lived and died in Prague
• Gene Deitch (born 1924) — American-born animator; lives in Prague
• Emmy Destinn (1878–1930) — operatic soprano; born in Prague
• Antonín Dvořák (1841–1904) — composer; lived most of his life in Prague
• Miloš Forman (born 1932) — film director, won twice Academy Award for Best Director; studied and lived in Prague
• Karel Gott (born 1939) — singer; lives in Prague
• Jaroslav Hašek (1883–1923) — writer, humorist and satirist; lived in Prague for most of his life, described the city in many stories
• Václav Havel (1936–2011) — dramatist, writer and politician — President of Czechoslovakia and Czech republic (its first; 1993–2003); born and lived in Prague
• Vladimír Holan (1905–1980) — poet; born, lived and died in Prague
• Bohumil Hrabal (1914–1997) — writer; lived and died in Prague
• Leoš Janáček (1854–1928) — composer; studied in Prague
• Fanny Janauschek (1830–1904) — actress; migrated to the United States in 1867
• Franz Kafka (1883–1924) — German-language fiction writer; born and lived in Prague
• Tomas Kalnoky (born 1980) — guitarist, singer; born in Prague
• Egon Erwin Kisch (1885–1948) – German-language journalist and writer; born, lived, and died in Prague
• Stefan Kisyov (born 1963) — novelist; lives in Prague
• Paul Kornfeld (1889–1942) — German-language playwright and novelist; born and lived in Prague
• Ivan Kral (born 1948) — guitarist, singer, record producer and film director; born in Prague
• Milan Kundera (born 1929) — writer; studied, lectured at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague
• Jiří Menzel (born 1938) — film director (his first feature film, Closely Watched Trains (1966) won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film); born in Prague
• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) — composer; some of his best opera successes were during his time in Prague
• Alfons Mucha (1860–1939) — Art Nouveau painter and decorative artist; spent last decades of his life in Prague
• Josef Václav Myslbek (1848–1922) — sculptor; born in Prague and creator of the Wenceslas Monument in Prague's Wenceslas Square
• Zuzana Navarová (1959–2004) — singer; lived and died in Prague
• Jože Plečnik (1872–1957) — Slovene architect; built several churches and parts of the Prague Castle
• Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) — German-language poet; born and studied in Prague
• Karel Roden (born 1962) — actor; lives in Prague
• Jan Saudek (born 1935) — art photographer; born and lives in Prague
• Jaroslav Seifert (1901–1986) — poet and recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature (1984); lived in Prague
• Bedřich Smetana (1824–1884) — composer; lived and died in Prague
• Jiří Suchý (born 1931) — actor, singer, playwright, writer; born and lives in Prague
• Bertha von Suttner (1843–1914) — novelist, pacifist activist and writer, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (1905)
• Johannes Urzidil (1896–1970) — German-language writer; born and lived in Prague, described the city in many stories (The Lost Beloved, 1956, Prague Triptych, 1960)
• Marja Vallila (born 1950) — sculptor
• Robert Vano (born 1948) — art photographer; lives in Prague
• Sonja Vectomov (born 1979) — composer, musician; lives in Prague
• Felix Weltsch (1884–1964) — German-language writer; born and lived in Prague
• Robert Weltsch (1891–1982) — German-language journalist; born and lived in Prague
• Franz Werfel (1890–1945) — German-language writer; born and lived in Prague
• Jan Werich (1905–1980) — actor, singer, playwright, writer; born, lived and died in Prague
• David Woodard (born 1964) — American-born writer and businessman; lives in Prague

Monarchs

• Charles IV (1316–1378) — Holy Roman Emperor; under his rule the Charles University in Prague was established and the Charles Bridge was built; made the city his main seat of government
• Rudolf II (1552–1612) — Holy Roman Emperor; made the city the capital of the Habsburg Empire; attracted both scientists and charlatans to Prague

The sciences

• Bernard Bolzano (1781–1848) — mathematician, logician, philosopher, Catholic theologian
• Tycho Brahe (1546–1601) — astronomer; spent end of life near Prague
• Carl Ferdinand Cori (1896–1984) — biochemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1947)
• Gerty Cori (1896–1957) — biochemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1947)
• Karl Deutsch (1912–1992) — social scientist, political scientist
• Albert Einstein (1879–1955) — physicist, served as professor at the German part of the Charles University in Prague (1911–1912)^[1]
• Jaroslav Heyrovský (1890–1967) — chemist; inventor of the polarographic method and recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1959); born, lived most of his life and died in Prague
• Antonín Holý (1936–2012) — chemist, pharmacologist
• Jan Janský (1873–1921) — serologist, neurologist, psychiatrist
• Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) — astronomer; in 1601, he succeeded Tycho Brahe as imperial mathematician and the next eleven years lectured for several years in Prague and published his paper on Doppler effect there

In sports

• Jitka Harazimova (born 1975) — professional bodybuilder; born and live in Prague
• Martina Navratilova (born 1956) — Tennis player; 18 times Grand Slam champion (9 time Wimbledon champion), born in Prague
• Pavel Nedvěd (born 1972) — football midfielder; European football player of the year 2003, played for Sparta Prague and Dukla Prague
• František Plánička (1904–1996) — football goalkeeper, captain of the Czechoslovakia national football team
• Tomáš Rosický (born 1980) — football midfielder; born in Prague
• Jan Soukup (born 1979) — karateka and kickboxer; born in Prague
• Emil Zátopek (1922–2000) — athlete; lived and died in Prague
• Tomáš Hertl (born in 1993) - Ice Hockey player, plays in the National Hockey League for the San Jose Sharks; Plays for the Czech Republic men's national ice hockey team; Born and raised in Prague.

Other fields

• Karel Baxa (1863–1938) — politician; mayor of Prague for almost two decades
• Charles Fried (1935) — United States Solicitor General, 1985–89
• Reinhard Heydrich (1904–1942) — Nazi general and protector; assassinated in Prague during Operation Anthropoid while serving as governor of the occupied country
• Jan Hus (1369–1415) — priest, philosopher, reformer; most-important preaching done in Prague
• František Křižík (1847–1941) — inventor, electrical engineer and entrepreneur – the main-belt asteroid 5719 Křižík was named in his honor;^[2] set up his company in Prague
• Judah Loew ben Bezalel (1525–1609) — Talmudic scholar, Jewish mystic and philosopher; lived most of his life in Prague
• Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk (1850–1937) — philosopher, politician; lived in Prague for a substantial part of his life
• Jan Patočka (1907–1977) — philosopher; born, lived and died in Prague
• Jan Žižka (circa 1360–1424) — general and Hussite leader; participated in start of the rebellion in Prague, later defended the city against Crusaders in the first anti-Hussite crusade of the Hussite Wars

Notes

1. Illy, Jozsef (March 1979). "Albert Einstein in Prague" (requires HTTP cookies enabled) pp. 76–84. Isis. OCLC 481047814.
2. Database (undated). "5719 Krizik (1983 RX)". JPL Small-Body Database Browser (maintained by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and hosted on the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) website). Accessed 5 February 2010.