Adolfo Lutz (18 December 1855 – 6 October 1940) was a Brazilian physician, father of tropical medicine and medical zoology in Brazil, and a pioneer epidemiologist and researcher in infectious diseases.

Wishing to pursue medical research, he returned to Hamburg, Germany once again, to work with Paul Gerson Unna (1850–1929), specializing in infectious diseases and tropical medicine.

The city of Santos was undergoing a severe epidemic of bubonic plague and Lutz went to work on it together with two other young physicians who would become luminaries of Brazilian medicine, Emílio Ribas and Vital Brazil.

His dedication to public health was also paramount to the research and fight of several epidemics in many points in Brazil, such as cholera, bubonic plague, smallpox, typhoid fever, malaria, ankylostomiasis, schistosomiasis and leishmaniasis; which were then widely prevalent as tropical diseases in the state, due to the poor conditions of poverty, hygiene and ignorance about its transmission mechanisms.

Adolfo Lutz is honored in the scientific names of two species of Brazilian amphibians and reptiles: Paratelmatobius lutzii,[1] a frog; and Bothrops lutzi,[2] a venomous snake.