Anton Polenec (7 October 1910 – 30 October 2000) was a Slovene zoologist and specialist arachnologist. Polenec was born in Puštal near Škofja Loka in 1910. He studied at the University of Ljubljana and later taught zoology and was head of the Natural History Museum of Slovenia from 1955 to 1980. He studied and described over 500 species of spiders including a new genus Centrophantes. The spider genus Polenecia is named after Polenec.