- Helge Schneider
Helge Schneider is a German comedian, jazz musician, book author, film and theatre director, author, and actor. After dropping out of high school, he started an apprenticeship as a construction draftsman. He soon changed plans and was admitted to the Duisburg conservatoire to study piano, after passing an entrance exam for particularly gifted applicants (it later turned out that his diploma was invalid since he dropped out of high school too early).
- Wolfgang Clement
Wolfgang Clement (born 7 July 1940 in Bochum) is a German politician (in the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD)). He was Premier of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia from 1998 to 2002 and Federal Minister of Economics and Labour from 2002 to 2005.
- Frank Goosen
Frank Goosen (*May 31 1966 in Bochum/Germany) is a German cabaret artist and novel author. He went to school and studied in Bochum. In 1986 he started his studies of history, German language and literature and politics at the Ruhr-University Bochum and finished in 1992 with a Magister (Masterdegree). Afterwards he founded a stand up-comedy group with his old school friend Jochen Malmsheimer. They were very popular in North Rhine-Westfalia and won the Prix Pantheon, …
- Otto Schily
Otto Georg Schily was Federal Minister of the Interior of Germany from 1998-2005, in the cabinet of former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder. Born in Bochum as the son of a mining plant director, he grew up in a family of anthroposophists. His younger brother is Konrad Schily, an academic and also a politician. In 1962, he passed his second state exam after having studied law and politics in Munich, Hamburg, and Berlin, thus being admitted to the bar; a year later, …
- Marc Pfertzel
Marc Pfertzel is a French football defender who currently plays for Bochum.
- Dietrich Grönemeyer
Dietrich H. W. Grönemeyer is a German professor of medicine and one of the inventors of Microtherapy. He grew up in Bochum with his two brothers. One of them, Herbert Grönemeyer, is a popular musician. After studying sinology and romance languages in Bochum and medicine in Kiel Grönemeyer graduated in 1978. In 1982 he received a Ph.D., and at the Witten/Herdecke University in 1990 he finished his habilitation, …
- Leander Haußmann
Leander Haußmann (sometimes Haussmann is a German theatre and film director. He is the son of actor Edzard Haußmann and costume designer Doris Haußmann, and attended the Ernst Busch theatre school in Berlin. He was the theatre director of the city theatre in Bochum (Schauspielhaus Bochum), also writing and acting in several plays (1995-2000), as well as having a role in the Detlev Buck film Männerpension.
- Bastian Pastewka
Bastian Pastewka (* April, 4th 1972 in Bochum, Germany) is a German actor and comedian. He first became known to a wider audience in Germany around 1996 as a regular cast member of the comedy show "Die Wochenshow" (engl.: The Weekly Show), essentially a mock news program. His trademarks included quirky, off-beat characters such as fruity sex talk show host "Brisko Schneider" and "Ottmar Zittlau", an unemployed, sweatsuit-wearing dimwit.
- Karin Beier
Karin Beier is a German theatre director. Beier was born in Cologne, Germany, after studying English studies in Cologne, Karin Beier moved into theatre. She established an English language theatre, and staged Shakespeare plays in their source language. Theatres began to grow in popularity, and she became the director of the Düsseldorf Theatre. Here she was able to display her first professional theatre production.
- Ercandize
Ercan Kocer (born April 12 1978), better known as Ercandize is a German rapper of Turkish ancestry and a certificated economist. He is signed on Kool Savas' label Optik Records. Ercandize grew up in Wesel. In his youth, he wrote graffiti until he started the rap crew ABS with Sedat and Daiker around 1993. Producer Discopolo, DJ Salicious and MC Short joined later. In 1999, ABS released their first single, "08-15/Focus", …
- Fatih Akyel
Fatih Akyel is a Turkish football player. He currently plays defender for Gençlerbirliği in the Turkcell Super League. He came up through the youth ranks of Galatasaray to become a part of the team that won the UEFA Cup and the European Super Cup in 2000 assisting Mario Jardel for the game winner againsr Real Madrid. He also played for Mallorca, Fenerbahçe, Bochum and Salonika.
- Konrad Schily
Konrad Schily (born November 7 1937 in Bochum) is a member of the German parliament, the Bundestag. He is a neurologist and founded the University of Witten-Herdecke, Germany's first private university, in 1982. He was the university's president from 1982 to 1989 and from 2002 to 2004. Schily was a member of the labour party SPD, but in 2003 he became a member of the "Innovationskreis NRW liberal", a think tank of the centrist party FDP.
- Axel Honneth
Axel Honneth is a professor at the "Institut für Sozialforschung" (Institute for Social Research) in Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany (the so-called Frankfurt School). He was born in Essen, and studied in Bonn, Bochum, Berlin and Munich (under Jürgen Habermas) before moving to Frankfurt. One of Honneth's core beliefs is that all grievances regarding the distribution of goods in society can be reduced to struggles for recognition.
- Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht
Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht is a German-born American literary theorist and currently the Albert Guérard Professor in Literature in the Departments of Comparative Literature, of French and Italian, at Stanford University. Born in 1948 in Würzburg, Germany, Gumbrecht received his academic education in Paris, Munich, Regensburg, Salamanca, Pavia and Konstanz, receiving his Ph.D. at the University of Konstanz in 1971 where he was also an assistant professor from 1971 to 1974.
- Christoph Konrad
Christoph Werner Konrad (b. August 28, 1957, Bochum) is a German politician and Member of the European Parliament for North Rhine-Westphalia. He is a member of the conservative Christian Democratic Union, part of the European People's Party.
- Hans Dobbertin
Hans Dobbertin was a German cryptographer who is best known for his cryptanalysis of the MD4 hash function. He was member of the German Federal Office for Information Security (Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik, BSI) and professor at the Ruhr University in Bochum. He also created a reconstruction of a lost stained glass picture of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, the earliest depiction of that semi-mythical character, which had existed in a church at that town.
- Günter Hermann
Günter Hermann was a German footballer, World Champion with West Germany in 1990 FIFA World Cup despite not being used a single time by coach Franz Beckenbauer in the tournament. In Germany, Hermann's presence in the World Cup winning squad is hardly remembered, although other members, that also not kicked a ball in the tournament, (such as striker Frank Mill) are rather easily identified as part of the World Cup winning squad.
- Mark Warnecke
Mark Warnecke (born February 15, 1970 in Bochum, North-Rhine Westphalia). is a breaststroke swimmer from Germany who, at age 35, won the world title in the 50m Breaststroke at the 2005 World Aquatics Championships in Montreal, Canada. That made him the oldest swimming world champion since 1971. He competed in four consecutive Summer Olympics for his native country, starting in 1988 in Seoul, South Korea, where he was a member of the 4x100 m medley relay team, …
- Ingo Naujoks
Ingo Naujoks is a German actor. He was born on 1st March 1962 in Bochum, Germany. He won the German Comedy Award for Bewegte Männer. He also starred in Rick And Olli.
- Carl Arnold Kortum
Carl Arnold Kortum was a German physician, but best known for his writing and poetry. Born in Mülheim, Kortum studied medicine and was from 1771 physician in Bochum, where he died in 1824. Kortum wrote several somewhat popular medical works, but also wrote a number of other less profitable works on various subjects, ranging from beekeeping to antiquarian topics to alchemy. However, he is most well known for his satirical epic poem, "Life, Opinions, …
- Tobias Nath
Tobias Nath (b. 1979 in Bochum, Germany) is a German television actor.
- Gudrun Landgrebe
Gudrun Landgrebe is a German actress. Landgrebe was born in Göttingen, grew up in Bochum, and attended theatre school in Cologne from 1968 until 1971. In 1971 she made her debut at Stadttheater Bielefeld. Since 1981 she has frequently appeared in German movies. Landgrebe has been married to Dr. Ulrich von Nathusius since June 2001.
- Else Hirsch
Else Hirsch was a Jewish teacher in Bochum, Germany, who helped Jewish children to emigrate from the Third Reich. Else Hirsch came from Berlin to Bochum in 1927 where she had been offered a job as a teacher at the Jewish school. Further she worked in the Jewish women's club and gave lessons in Hebrew to girls.
- Mavie Hörbiger
Mavie Hörbiger is a German-Austrian actress. She has both German and Austrian citizenship, but lives in Switzerland. She did not complete college but visited the acting school of Christa Willschrei in Munich. In 1996, she made her on-camera debut in Michael Gutmann's television feature "Nur für eine Nacht". Mavie had theatre engagements in Hannover and Bochum (Rachel in "Sanft und grausam", 2006; Jeannie in "Fettes Schwein", 2005; title role in "Lulu", …
- Renate Sommer
Renate Sommer (b. September 10, 1958, Bochum) is a German politician and Member of the European Parliament for North Rhine-Westphalia. She is a member of the conservative Christian Democratic Union, part of the European People's Party.
- Stephan Breuing
Stephan Breuing (born 21 September 1985 in Bochum) is a German flatwater canoer and current (2006) world and European champion in the Canadian canoe C4 1000m. At the age of just fifteen, competing against athletes up to three years older, Breuing won two gold medals at the 2001 World Junior Championships in Curitiba, Brazil. His victories in the C2 500m (partnering Tomasz Wylenzek) and C4 1000m made him the youngest champion since Ronald Rauhe.
- Hans Korte
Hans Korte (b. April 8, 1929 in Bochum, Germany) is a German television actor.
- Josef Franke
Josef Franke (born March 12, 1876, Bochum, Germany, died January 16, 1944, Gelsenkirchen, Germany) was a German Expressionist architect. He created a number of sacred and secular buildings, in the Ruhrgebiet, particularly in Gelsenkirchen. He is noted for his work of the 1920s in the brick-expressionist style.
- Heiner Zieschang
Heiner Zieschang was a German mathematician. He was a professor at Ruhr University in Bochum from 1968 till 2002. He was a topologist. In 1996 he was a honorary doctor of University of Toulouse and in 1997 he was a honorary professor of Moscow State University.
- Michael Hagemeister
Michael Hagemeister (born 9 January 1951, Ellwangen, Germany) is a contemporary German scholar, historian and slavist, and one of the world's foremost authorities on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and on Sergei Nilus, who first published "The Protocols" in book form in 1905. Hagemeister was employed at the universities of Marburg, Bochum, Basel, Innsbruck, Frankfurt (Oder) ("Viadrina European University"), and Berlin.
- Elena Kats-Chernin
Elena Kats-Chernin is a Soviet-born Australian music composer. She was born in Tashkent (now the capital of independent Uzbekistan — but then, part of the Soviet Union), and emigrated to Australia in 1975. She studied composition with Richard Toop, and later with Helmut Lachenmann in Germany. While in Europe she became active in theatre and ballet, composing for state theatres in Berlin, Vienna, Hamburg and Bochum.
- Zoran Mamić
Zoran Mamić is a former Croatian footballer and current sporting director for Dinamo Zagreb. He played for Dinamo Zagreb between 1992 and 1996, after which he went on to spend nine years playing for various clubs in Germany. Between 1996 and 1998, he made 45 Bundesliga appearances and scored four league goals for Bochum. In 1998, he moved for two seasons to Bayer Leverkusen, but only made 15 Bundesliga appearances for the club without scoring a goal.
- Siegfried Balke
Siegfried Balke (born on June 1 1902 in Bochum, died on June 11 1984 in Munich) was a German politician (CSU). He served as German Federal Minister for Post and Communications from 1953 to 1956 and as German Federal Minister for Nuclear Energy from 1956 to 1962.
- Uwe Storch
Uwe Storch is a German mathematician. His field of research is commutative algebra and analytic and algebraic geometry, in particular derivations, divisor class group, resultants. Storch studied mathematics, physics and mathematical logic in Münster and in Heidelberg. He got his PhD 1966 under the supervision of Heinrich Behnke with a thesis on almost (or Q) factorial rings.
- Werner Stengel
Werner Stengel is a notable German roller coaster designer and engineer. He is the founder of Stengel Engineering, also known as Ingenieur Büro Stengel GmbH (or Ingenieur Buero Stengel GmbH). Born 22 August 1936, in Bochum, Germany, he first worked on amusement park rides in collaboration with Anton Schwarzkopf in 1963. He established his own company, Stengel Engineering, in 1965.
- Paul Rostock
Paul Rostock (January 18, 1892 - June 17, 1956) was a German official, surgeon, and university professor. He was Chief of the Office for Medical Science and Research ("Amtschef der Dienststelle Medizinische Wissenschaft und Forschung") under Third Reich Commissioner Karl Brandt and a Full Professor, Medical Doctorate, Medical Superintendent of the University of Berlin Surgical Clinic. Rostock was born in Kranz/Meseritz, Greater Poland.
- Franz-Paul Decker
Franz-Paul Decker is a German-Canadian conductor. Decker studied at the Hochschule für Musik in Cologne with Philip Jarnach and Eugen Papst. He made his conducting début at the age of 22 at the Cologne Opera, and four years later was appointed to the Staatsoper, Wiesbaden and subsequently to the positions of conductor of the Wiesbaden Symphony Orchestra and Generalmusikdirecktor in Bochum.
- Henrik Schaefer
Henrik Schaefer is a German conductor, was born in Bochum in 1968. At the age of 6 he began playing the violin and changed to viola when he was 14. After his studies in Essen and Freiburg with Prof. Grahe, Prof. Koch, Prof. Kashkashian and Prof. Luethy, he became the then youngest member of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra at the age of 22. As well as playing in the orchestra he studied conducting in Leipzig with Prof. Rohde from 1994 to 1998.
- Natja Brunckhorst
Natja Brunckhorst (born on September 26 1966 in Berlin) is a German film actress. She is mostly known for her role as Christiane F. in the drama "Christiane F. - Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo". Natja Brunckhorst started her career at age 13 in the drama "Christiane F. - Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo". After the unexpected success of this film she retreated from public life and went to school in England.
- Alistair Beaton
Alistair Beaton (born 1947) is a Scottish left wing political satirist, journalist, radio presenter, novelist and television writer. At one point in his career he was also a speechwriter for Gordon Brown. Born in Glasgow, Beaton was educated at the Universities of Edinburgh, Moscow and Bochum and graduated from Edinburgh University with First Class Honours in Russian and German. He lives in Holloway, London.