Paul Gottlieb Nipkow, Polish-German technician and inventor, created the Nipkow disk (d. 1940)
Paul Julius Gottlieb Nipkow (22 August 1860 – 24 August 1940) was a German technician and inventor. He invented the Nipkow disk, which laid the foundation of television, since his disk was a fundamental component in the first televisions. Hundreds of stations experimented with television broadcasting using his disk in the 1920s and 1930s, until it was superseded by all-electronic systems in the 1940s.

The first public television station in the world, Fernsehsender Paul Nipkow, was named in his honour.