Named after Voltastraße, which honours the physicist Alessandro Volta.
Since 1896 the street has borne the name of the Italian physicist Alessandro Volta (1745–1827), inventor of the Voltaic pile, known today as the electric battery; the volt is named after him. The AEG works stood along the street, and from 1897 an electric railway ran between two parts of the factory through a test tunnel beneath it. This tunnel is regarded as Berlin's first underground railway.