Rudolf Schmitt (August 5, 1830 – February 18, 1898) was a German chemist who together with Adolph Wilhelm Hermann Kolbe discovered the Kolbe-Schmitt reaction.

Schmitt was born in the small village Wippershain in the Hesse-Kassel as the second of eight siblings as son of a preacher.

After 8 Semesters he joined Hermann Fehling at the University of Stuttgart but returned to work with Adolph Kolbe in 1857.

Due to an explosion of a glass tube filled with hydrogen sulfide he lost his right eye in 1869.

He spent most of his academic career at the Dresden University of Technology which was promoted from to a Polytechnicum and in 1890 to a Technische Hochschule during his stay.