Zsolt Baranyai (Budapest, June 23, 1948 — April 18, 1978) was a Hungarian mathematician, working in combinatorics.
He graduated from the Fazekas Highschool where he was a classmate of László Lovász, Miklós Laczkovich, and Lajos Pósa. Following this he learned mathematics at the Eötvös Loránd University between 1967 and 1972. Afterwards he was a lecturer at the Analysis Department of the same university. He got his Ph.D. in 1975 and obtained the Candidate degree of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 1978, posthumously.
He did research in combinatorics, and his remarkable theorem on the decompositions of complete hypergraphs solved a long-standing open problem. He was also a well known player on the recorder.
He died in a car accident.