Famous people named Bergmann

Medicine and science

Ernst von Bergmann (1836–1907), a Baltic German surgeon, introduced heat sterilisation of instruments and helped turn antiseptic surgery into aseptic surgery. The anatomist Carl Bergmann (1814–1865) gave his name to Bergmann's rule, the observation that animals of the same group tend to be larger in colder climates.

In Israel, chemist Ernst David Bergmann (1903–1975) headed the country's early atomic energy commission; his brother Theodor Bergmann (1916–2017) was an agronomist and writer.

Music

• Carl Bergmann (1821–1876), German-American cellist and conductor who led the New York Philharmonic.
• Art Bergmann (born 1953), Canadian punk and rock singer-songwriter.

Philosophers and scientists

The anatomist Carl Bergmann (1814–1865) gave his name to Bergmann's rule, the observation that animals of a species tend to be larger in colder climates. Hugo Bergmann (1883–1975), a school friend of Franz Kafka in Prague, became a philosopher and the first rector of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; his son Martin S. Bergmann (1913–2014) was a New York psychoanalyst. The physicist Peter Gabriel Bergmann (1915–2002) worked with Albert Einstein at Princeton, and the Brazilian astrophysicist Thaisa Storchi Bergmann (born 1955) studies black holes in galaxies. In politics, Sabine Bergmann-Pohl (born 1946) was the last head of state of East Germany, and in Prague Pavel Bergmann (1930–2005), Hugo's nephew, signed Charter 77, the 1977 human-rights manifesto of Czechoslovak dissidents.

Sport and ideas

Gretel Bergmann (1914–2017) was a world-class Jewish high jumper whom the Nazi regime excluded from Germany's 1936 Olympic team; she later emigrated to the United States. Philosopher Frithjof Bergmann (1930–2021) developed the idea of "New Work", and Icelandic writer Eirikur Bergmann (born 1969) is a political scientist.

These Bergmanns are mostly unrelated, since the name formed independently in mining districts and hill country; heraldic arms belonged to individual lines. Our Bergmann coat of arms page explains the meaning, and Bergmann family history and genealogy sets out a research plan.