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.

The arts

An oil portrait of Smetana, 1854, by Geskel Saloman

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 (1939–2023) — 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
Jan Cina (born 1988) — actor and singer
Gene Deitch (1924–2020) — 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 (1932–2018) — film director, won twice Academy Award for Best Director; studied and lived in Prague
Karel Gott (1939–2019) — singer; lived in Prague
Jaroslav Hašek (1883–1923) — writer, humorist and satirist; lived in Prague for most of his life, described the city in many stories
Auguste Hauschner (1850-1924) — German writer, born in Prague
Václav Havel (1936–2011) — dramatist, writer and politician; President of Czechoslovakia and Czech republic (its first; 1993–2003); born and lived in Prague
Maxim Havlíček — painter; born in Prague
Karel Heřmánek (1947–2024) — actor; born in Prague
Vladimír Holan (1905–1980) — poet; born, lived and died in Prague
Jiří Hošta (born 1978) — writer, essayist, photographer; lives 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
Gertrud Kauders (1883–1942) – artist; 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
Daria Klimentová (born 1971) - ballet dancer; born and raised in Prague
Paul Kornfeld (1889–1942) — German-language playwright and novelist; born and lived in Prague
Ivan Kral (1948–2020) — 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
Master of the Chudenice Altarpiece — painter active in Prague at the turn of the late Gothic and early Renaissance
Leopold Eugen Měchura (1804–1870) — composer
Jiří Menzel (1938-2020) — 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
Kamila Špráchalová (born 1971) — stage and television actress
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)
Vladimír Svozil (born 1966) — painter
Lubor Těhník (1926–1987) — ceramist
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 (1950–2018) — 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
Walter Trier (1890–1951) — illustrator; born in Prague
Dana Zámečníková (1945-) – sculptor, born 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]
Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) — inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, and futurist, studied at Charles University in Prague (1880)^[2]
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
Enoch Heinrich Kisch (1841-1918), balneologist

In sports

František Getreuer (1906–1945), swimmer and Olympic water polo player, killed in Dachau concentration camp
Radko Gudas (born 1990), ice hockey player
Ladislav Hecht (1909–2004), Czechoslovak-American tennis player
Tomáš Hertl (born in 1993), ice hockey player; born and raised in Prague
Jeremy Kelly (born 1997), footballer; born in Prague
Martina Navratilova (born 1956), tennis player; 18 times Grand Slam champion, born in Prague
Pavel Nedvěd (born 1972), footballer; 2003 Ballon d'Or winner; lived and played in Prague
Felix Pipes (1887–1983), tennis player, Olympic medalist
František Plánička (1904–1996), footballer, captain of the Czechoslovakia national football team
Tomáš Rosický (born 1980), footballer; born in Prague
Jan Soukup (born 1979), karateka and kickboxer; born in Prague
Daniel Vladař (born 1997), ice hockey goaltender, born in Prague
Jakub Vrána (born 1996), ice hockey player; born and raised in Prague
Václav Žáček (born 1978), personal watercraft extreme sports athlete; born in Prague
Emil Zátopek (1922–2000), athlete, Olympic winner; lived and died in Prague

Other fields

Vladimir Balthasar (1897–1978), entomologist, naturalist and ornithologist
Karel Baxa (1863–1938), politician; mayor of Prague for almost two decades
Adolph Aloys von Braun (1818–1904), diplomat and statesman
Jan van der Croon (1600–1665), Dutch soldier; military commander of Prague 1652–1665
Charles Fried (1935), United States Solicitor General, 1985–89
Rabbi Manis Friedman (1946), Prague-born American Chabad Rabbi, Author, and Lecturer
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
Jerome of Prague (1379–1416), scholastic philosopher, theologian, reformer, and professor
Gershom ben Solomon Kohen (d. 1544), early printer of Hebrew books and founder of the Gersonides (printers)
Pyotra Krecheuski (1879–1928), Belarusian statesman and president of the Rada of the Belarusian Democratic Republic in exile; died in Prague
František Křižík (1847–1941), inventor, electrical engineer and entrepreneur 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
Vasil Zacharka (1877–1943), Belarusian statesman and the second president of the Belarusian Democratic Republic in exile; 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