Kurt Mehlhorn (born 29 August 1949) is a German theoretical computer scientist.

Since 1975 he has been on the faculty of Saarland University in Saarbrücken, Germany, where he was chair of the computer science department from 1976 to 1978 and again from 1987 to 1989.

Mehlhorn has played an important role in the establishment of several research centres for computer science in Germany.

Mehlhorn is managing director of the institute and heads the department of algorithms and complexity.

He also initiated[4] the research center for computer science at Dagstuhl and the European Symposium on Algorithms.