100 Notable alumni of
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich
Updated:
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich is 311th in the world, 107th in Europe, and 3rd in Switzerland by aggregated alumni prominence. Below is the list of 100 notable alumni from Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich sorted by their wiki pages popularity. The directory includes famous graduates and former students along with research and academic staff. 4 individuals affiliated with Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich won Nobel Prizes in Chemistry.
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Albert Einstein
- Enrolled in Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich
- 1896-1900 graduated with Bachelor of Science in mathematics education
- Occupations
- physicist
- Biography
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Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist who is best known for developing the theory of relativity. Einstein also made important contributions to quantum mechanics. His mass–energy equivalence formula E = mc, which arises from special relativity, has been called "the world's most famous equation". He received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics for his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect.
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Mileva Marić
- Occupations
- physicistmathematicianteacher
- Biography
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Mileva Marić, sometimes called Mileva Marić-Einstein (Милева Марић-Ајнштајн, Mileva Marić-Ajnštajn), was a Serbian physicist and mathematician. She showed intellectual aptitude from a young age and studied at Zürich Polytechnic in a highly male dominated field, after having studied medicine for one semester at Zürich University. Her studies included differential and integral calculus, descriptive and projective geometry, mechanics, theoretical physics, applied physics, experimental physics, and astronomy. One of her study colleagues at university was her future husband Albert Einstein, to whose early work Marić is thought by some to have contributed (in particular the Annus Mirabilis papers).
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Klaus Schwab
- Occupations
- economistpedagogue
- Biography
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Klaus Martin Schwab is a German mechanical engineer, economist, and founder of the World Economic Forum (WEF). He has acted as the WEF's chairman since founding the organisation in 1971, in May 2024, WEF announced that Schwab will move from his role as Executive Chairman to chairman of the Board of Trustees by January 2025. No successor has been named yet.
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Wilhelm Röntgen
- Enrolled in Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich
- 1865-1868 studied mechanical engineering
- Occupations
- researcherengineerphysicistprofessor
- Biography
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Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen was a German physicist, who, on 8 November 1895, produced and detected electromagnetic radiation in a wavelength range known as X-rays or Röntgen rays, an achievement that earned him the inaugural Nobel Prize in Physics in 1901. In honour of Röntgen's accomplishments, in 2004, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) named element 111, roentgenium, a radioactive element with multiple unstable isotopes, after him. The non-SI unit of radiation exposure, the roentgen (R), is also named after him.
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Fritz Haber
- Occupations
- engineerchemistacademicuniversity teacherphysicist
- Biography
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Fritz Haber was a German chemist who received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1918 for his invention of the Haber process, a method used in industry to synthesize ammonia from nitrogen gas and hydrogen gas. This invention is important for the large-scale synthesis of fertilizers and explosives. It is estimated that a third of annual global food production uses ammonia from the Haber–Bosch process, and that this food supports nearly half the world's population. For this work, Haber has been called one of the most important scientists and industrial chemists in human history. Haber also, along with Max Born, proposed the Born–Haber cycle as a method for evaluating the lattice energy of an ionic solid.
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Santiago Calatrava
- Occupations
- engineerarchitectstructural engineersculptorconservator
- Biography
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Santiago Calatrava Valls is a Spanish-Swiss architect, structural engineer, sculptor and painter, particularly known for his bridges supported by single leaning pylons, and his railway stations, stadiums, and museums, whose sculptural forms often resemble living organisms. His best-known works include the Olympic Sports Complex of Athens, the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Turning Torso tower in Malmö, Sweden, the World Trade Center Transportation Hub in New York City, the Auditorio de Tenerife in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge in Dallas, Texas, and his largest project, the City of Arts and Sciences and Opera House in his birthplace, Valencia. His architectural firm has offices in New York City, Doha, and Zurich.
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Ferdinand Piëch
- Occupations
- industrialistinventormanagerentrepreneurdesign engineer
- Biography
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Ferdinand Karl Piëch was an Austrian business magnate, engineer, and executive who held the positions of chairman of the executive board (Vorstandsvorsitzender) of the Volkswagen Group from 1993 to 2002, and chairman of the supervisory board (Aufsichtsratsvorsitzender) from 2002 to 2015.
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Max Frisch
- Occupations
- diaristnovelistwriterphilosopherplaywright
- Biography
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Max Rudolf Frisch was a Swiss playwright and novelist. Frisch's works focused on problems of identity, individuality, responsibility, morality, and political commitment. The use of irony is a significant feature of his post-war output. Frisch was one of the founders of Gruppe Olten. He was awarded the 1965 Jerusalem Prize, the 1973 Grand Schiller Prize, and the 1986 Neustadt International Prize for Literature.
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Naguib Sawiris
- Occupations
- businesspersonfilm producerpoliticianentrepreneurdiplomat
- Biography
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Naguib Onsi Sawiris is an Egyptian businessman. Sawiris is chairman of Weather Investments's parent company, and the former chairman and CEO of Orascom Telecom Holding and Orascom Investment Holding S.A.E.
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Gabriel Narutowicz
- Occupations
- civil engineeruniversity teacherpoliticiandiplomatforeign minister
- Biography
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Gabriel Józef Narutowicz was a Polish professor of hydroelectric engineering and politician who served as the first president of Poland from 11 December 1922 until his assassination, five days after assuming office. He previously served as the minister of public works from 1920 to 1922 and briefly as the minister of foreign affairs in 1922. A renowned engineer and politically independent, Narutowicz was the first elected head of state following Poland's regained sovereignty from partitioning powers.
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Simon Ammann
- Occupations
- alpine skierski jumper
- Biography
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Simon Ammann is a Swiss ski jumper. He is one of the most successful athletes in the history of the sport, having won four individual Winter Olympic gold medals in 2002 and 2010. His other achievements include winning the 2007 Ski Jumping World Championships, the 2010 Ski Flying World Championships, the 2010 Nordic Tournament, and the 2010 Ski Jumping World Cup overall title.
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Auguste Piccard
- Occupations
- Privatdozentexploreruniversity teacherballoonistphysicist
- Biography
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Auguste Antoine Piccard was a Swiss physicist, inventor and explorer known for his record-breaking hydrogen balloon flights, with which he studied the Earth's upper atmosphere and became the first person to enter the Stratosphere. Piccard was also known for his invention of the first bathyscaphe, FNRS-2, with which he made a number of unmanned dives in 1948 to explore the ocean's depths.
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Niklaus Wirth
- Enrolled in Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich
- In 1959 graduated with Bachelor of Science
- Occupations
- inventorprogrammeruniversity teachercomputer scientistengineer
- Biography
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Niklaus Emil Wirth was a Swiss computer scientist. He designed several programming languages, including Pascal, and pioneered several classic topics in software engineering. In 1984, he won the Turing Award, generally recognized as the highest distinction in computer science, "for developing a sequence of innovative computer languages".
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Carlos Kleiber
- Occupations
- conductor
- Biography
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Carlos Kleiber was a German-born Austrian conductor, who is widely regarded as among the greatest conductors of all time.
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Hansjörg Wyss
- Enrolled in Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich
- In 1959 graduated with Master of Science in structural engineering and civil engineering
- Occupations
- philanthropistinvestorbusinesspersonentrepreneur
- Biography
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Johann Georg "Hansjörg" Wyss is a Swiss billionaire businessman and donor to politically liberal and environmental causes in the United States. He is the founder and former president and chairman of Synthes, a medical device manufacturer. His Wyss Foundation has more than $2 billion in assets.
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Nikola Pašić
- Occupations
- diplomatpolitician
- Biography
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Nikola Pašić was a Serbian and Yugoslav politician and diplomat. During his political career, which spanned almost five decades, he served five times as prime minister of Serbia and three times as prime minister of Yugoslavia, leading 22 governments in total. He played an instrumental role in the founding of Yugoslavia and is considered one of the most influential figures in Serbian twentieth-century history. With 12 years in office, Pašić was the longest-serving prime minister of Serbia.
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Fritz Zwicky
- Enrolled in Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich
- Studied in 1916-1922
- Occupations
- university teacherastrophysicistastronomerphysicist
- Biography
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Fritz Zwicky was a Swiss astronomer. He worked most of his life at the California Institute of Technology in the United States of America, where he made many important contributions in theoretical and observational astronomy. In 1933, Zwicky was the first to use the virial theorem to postulate the existence of unseen dark matter, describing it as "dunkle Materie".
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Felix Bloch
- Occupations
- physicistuniversity teachernuclear physicist
- Biography
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Felix Bloch was a Swiss-American physicist and Nobel physics laureate who worked mainly in the U.S. He and Edward Mills Purcell were awarded the 1952 Nobel Prize for Physics for "their development of new ways and methods for nuclear magnetic precision measurements." In 1954–1955, he served for one year as the first director-general of CERN. Felix Bloch made fundamental theoretical contributions to the understanding of ferromagnetism and electron behavior in crystal lattices. He is also considered one of the developers of nuclear magnetic resonance.
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Carl von Linde
- Occupations
- university teacherengineerphysicistentrepreneur
- Biography
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Carl Paul Gottfried von Linde was a German scientist, engineer, and businessman. He discovered the refrigeration cycle and invented the first industrial-scale air separation and gas liquefaction processes, which led to the first reliable and efficient compressed-ammonia refrigerator in 1876.
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Johann Schneider-Ammann
- Enrolled in Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich
- In 1977 studied electrical engineering
- Occupations
- engineerpoliticianindustrialist
- Biography
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Johann Niklaus Schneider, known as Johann Schneider-Ammann, is a Swiss businessman and politician who served as a Member of the Swiss Federal Council from 2010 to 2018. A member of FDP. The Liberals, he was President of the Swiss Confederation in 2016. During his tenure as a federal councillor, Schneider-Ammann headed the Federal Department of Economic Affairs, Education and Research.
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Peter Debye
- Occupations
- physicistscientistchemistuniversity teachertheoretical physicist
- Biography
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Peter Joseph William Debye ForMemRS was a Dutch-American physicist and physical chemist, and Nobel laureate in Chemistry.
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Maurice Koechlin
- Occupations
- engineernon-fiction writercivil engineer
- Biography
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Maurice Koechlin was a Franco-Swiss structural engineer from the Koechlin family.
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Walter Thurnherr
- Enrolled in Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich
- Studied in 1983-1987
- Occupations
- politiciandiplomatcivil servant
- Biography
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Walter Thurnherr is a Swiss government official who served as Chancellor of Switzerland from 2016 to 2023. Although he holds a traditionally nonpartisan office, he was elected as a member of the Christian Democratic People's Party (CVP/PDC). When it merged with the Conservative Democratic Party (BDP/PBD) to form The Centre (DM/LC) in 2021, Thurnherr joined the new party.
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Alfred Werner
- Occupations
- university teacherchemist
- Biography
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Alfred Werner was a Swiss chemist who was a student at ETH Zurich and a professor at the University of Zurich. He won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1913 for proposing the octahedral configuration of transition metal complexes. Werner developed the basis for modern coordination chemistry. He was the first inorganic chemist to win the Nobel Prize, and the only one prior to 1973.
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Bernard Tschumi
- Occupations
- university teacherurban plannerarchitectural theoreticianarchitect
- Biography
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Bernard Tschumi is an architect, writer, and educator, commonly associated with deconstructivism. Son of the well-known Swiss architect Jean Tschumi and a French mother, Tschumi is a dual French-Swiss national who works and lives in New York City and Paris. He studied in Paris and at ETH in Zurich, where he received his degree in architecture in 1969.
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Hermann Staudinger
- Occupations
- engineeruniversity teacherchemist
- Biography
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Hermann Staudinger was a German organic chemist who demonstrated the existence of macromolecules, which he characterized as polymers. For this work he received the 1953 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
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Vladimir Prelog
- Occupations
- engineeruniversity teacherchemist
- Biography
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Vladimir Prelog ForMemRS was a Croatian-Swiss organic chemist who received the 1975 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his research into the stereochemistry of organic molecules and reactions. Prelog was born, and spent his infancy, in Sarajevo, and youth in Zagreb, Osijek and Prague. He later lived and worked in Prague, Zagreb and Zürich.
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Albert Rösti
- Occupations
- politician
- Biography
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Albert Rösti is a Swiss businessman, lobbyist and politician who has been a Member of the Swiss Federal Council since 1 January 2023. He previously presided over the Swiss People's Party (SVP/UDC) from 2016 to 2020 and served as a member of the National Council for the canton of Bern from 2011 until 2022. Rösti resides in Uetendorf near Thun.
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Leopold Ružička
- Occupations
- university teacherchemist
- Biography
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Leopold Ružička ForMemRS was a Croatian-Swiss scientist and joint winner of the 1939 Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for his work on polymethylenes and higher terpenes" "including the first chemical synthesis of male sex hormones." He worked most of his life in Switzerland, and received eight doctorates honoris causa in science, medicine, and law; seven prizes and medals; and twenty-four honorary memberships in chemical, biochemical, and other scientific societies.
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Marcel Grossmann
- Enrolled in Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich
- Studied in 1896-1900
- Occupations
- mathematicianuniversity teacher
- Biography
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Marcel Grossmann was a Swiss mathematician who was a friend and classmate of Albert Einstein. Grossmann came from an old Swiss family in Zürich. His father managed a textile factory. He became a Professor of Mathematics at the Federal Polytechnic School in Zürich, today the ETH Zurich, specializing in descriptive geometry.
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Michele Besso
- Enrolled in Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich
- Studied in 1895
- Occupations
- mathematicianengineer
- Biography
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Michele Angelo Besso was a Swiss-Italian engineer who worked closely with Albert Einstein.
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Philippe Kahn
- Occupations
- computer scientistentrepreneur
- Biography
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Philippe Kahn is a French engineer, entrepreneur, and founder of four technology companies: Borland, Starfish Software, LightSurf Technologies, and Fullpower Technologies. Kahn is credited with creating the first camera phone, being a pioneer for wearable technology intellectual property, and is the author of dozens of technology patents covering Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI) modeling, wearable, eyewear, smartphone, mobile, imaging, wireless, synchronization and medical technologies.
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Emma Pooley
- Occupations
- sport cyclisttriathletemarathon runner
- Biography
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Emma Jane Pooley is a British-Swiss athlete in multiple sports. A former professional cyclist who specialised in time trials and hilly races, she later transferred to endurance running, duathlon and triathlon, and was four-times world champion in long-distance duathlon. She competes in long-distance and uphill mountain running and has represented Switzerland at the world trailrunning championships.
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Hendrik Petrus Berlage
- Occupations
- furniture designerart theoristdesignerceramics designerarchitect
- Biography
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Hendrik Petrus Berlage was a Dutch architect and designer. He is considered one of the fathers of the architecture of the Amsterdam School.
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Ivan Morozov
- Occupations
- art collectorbusinessperson
- Biography
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Ivan Abramovich Morozov was a Russian businessman and, from 1907 to 1914, a major collector of avant-garde French art.
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Martin Odersky
- Occupations
- computer scientistengineerprofessorprogrammer
- Biography
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Martin Odersky is a German computer scientist and professor of programming methods at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland. He specializes in code analysis and programming languages. He spearheaded the design of Scala and Generic Java (and Pizza before).
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Ferdinand Georg Frobenius
- Occupations
- mathematicianuniversity teacher
- Biography
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Ferdinand Georg Frobenius was a German mathematician, best known for his contributions to the theory of elliptic functions, differential equations, number theory, and to group theory. He is known for the famous determinantal identities, known as Frobenius–Stickelberger formulae, governing elliptic functions, and for developing the theory of biquadratic forms. He was also the first to introduce the notion of rational approximations of functions (nowadays known as Padé approximants), and gave the first full proof for the Cayley–Hamilton theorem. He also lent his name to certain differential-geometric objects in modern mathematical physics, known as Frobenius manifolds.
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Marcel Janco
- Occupations
- writermusiciansculptorarchitectpainter
- Biography
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Marcel Janco was a Romanian and Israeli visual artist, architect and art theorist. He was the co-inventor of Dadaism and a leading exponent of Constructivism in Eastern Europe. In the 1910s, he co-edited, with Ion Vinea and Tristan Tzara, the Romanian art magazine Simbolul. Janco was a practitioner of Art Nouveau, Futurism and Expressionism before contributing his painting and stage design to Tzara's literary Dadaism. He parted with Dada in 1919, when he and painter Hans Arp founded a Constructivist circle, Das Neue Leben.
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Richard R. Ernst
- Occupations
- researcherchemist
- Biography
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Richard Robert Ernst was a Swiss physical chemist and Nobel laureate.
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Aldo van Eyck
- Occupations
- scenographeruniversity teacherarchitect
- Biography
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Aldo van Eyck was a Dutch architect. He was one of the most influential protagonists of the architectural movement Structuralism.
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Othmar Hermann Ammann
- Occupations
- civil engineerarchitectengineerstructural engineer
- Biography
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Othmar Hermann Ammann was a Swiss-American civil engineer whose bridge designs include the George Washington Bridge, Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, and Bayonne Bridge. He also directed the planning and construction of the Lincoln Tunnel.
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Jacques Roumain
- Enrolled in Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich
- Studied in 1926
- Occupations
- politicianwriterpoetjournalist
- Biography
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Jacques Roumain was a Haitian writer, politician, and advocate of Marxism. He is considered one of the most prominent figures in Haitian literature. Poet Langston Hughes, an African-American, translated some of Roumain's works, including Gouverneurs de la Rosée (Masters of the Dew). It was also adapted to film.
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Kurt Wüthrich
- Occupations
- chemistuniversity teacherbiophysicist
- Biography
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Kurt Wüthrich is a Swiss chemist/biophysicist and Nobel Chemistry laureate, known for developing nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) methods for studying biological macromolecules.
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Heinrich Rohrer
- Occupations
- physicist
- Biography
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Heinrich Rohrer was a Swiss physicist who shared half of the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physics with Gerd Binnig for the design of the scanning tunneling microscope (STM). The other half of the Prize was awarded to Ernst Ruska. The Heinrich Rohrer Medal is presented triennially by the Surface Science Society of Japan with IBM Research – Zurich, Swiss Embassy in Japan, and Ms. Rohrer in his memory. The medal is not to be confused with the Heinrich Rohrer Award presented at the Nano Seoul 2020 conference.
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Tadeusz Reichstein
- Occupations
- physicianchemistbotanistscientistuniversity teacher
- Biography
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Tadeusz Reichstein, also known as Tadeus Reichstein, was a Polish-Swiss chemist and the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine laureate (1950), which was awarded for his work on the isolation of cortisone.
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Urs Hölzle
- Years
- 20th Century
- Occupations
- computer scientist
- Biography
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Urs Hölzle is a Swiss-American software engineer and technology executive. As Google's eighth employee and its first VP of Engineering, he has shaped much of Google's development processes and infrastructure, as well as its engineering culture. His most notable contributions include leading the development of fundamental cloud infrastructure such as energy-efficient data centers, distributed compute and storage systems, and software-defined networking. Until July 2023, he was the Senior Vice President of Technical Infrastructure and Google Fellow at Google. In July 2023, he transitioned to being a Google Fellow only.
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Werner Arber
- Occupations
- university teacherphysiciangeneticistbiologist
- Biography
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Werner Arber is a Swiss microbiologist and geneticist. Along with American researchers Hamilton Smith and Daniel Nathans, Werner Arber shared the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of restriction endonucleases. Their work would lead to the development of recombinant DNA technology.
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Walter Ruttmann
- Enrolled in Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich
- Studied architecture
- Occupations
- animatorfilm directorpaintercinematographerscreenwriter
- Biography
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Walter Ruttmann was a German cinematographer and film director, an important German abstract experimental film maker, along with Hans Richter, Viking Eggeling and Oskar Fischinger. He is best known for directing the semi-documentary 'city symphony' silent film, with orchestral score by Edmund Meisel, in 1927, Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis. His audio montage Wochenende (Weekend) (1930) is considered a major contribution in the development of sound collages and audio plays.
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Friedrich Adler
- Occupations
- translatorpoliticianphysicistjournalistphilosopher
- Biography
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Friedrich Wolfgang "Fritz" Adler was an Austrian socialist politician, physicist, philosopher and journalist. He is perhaps best known for his assassination of Minister-President Karl von Stürgkh in 1916.
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Karl Alexander Müller
- Occupations
- physicistuniversity teacher
- Biography
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Karl Alexander Müller was a Swiss physicist and Nobel laureate. He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1987 with Georg Bednorz for their work in superconductivity in ceramic materials.
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Corine Mauch
- Enrolled in Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich
- 1980-1988 graduated with bachelor of agricultural engineering
- Occupations
- politician
- Biography
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Corine Mauch is an American-born Swiss politician who currently serves as Mayor of Zurich since 2009. She previously served on the city council of Zürich between 1999 and 2008 for the Social Democratic Party of Switzerland (of which she was a member since 1990). Mauch is the first female and first openly lesbian person to be elected mayor of the city.
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Aurel Stodola
- Enrolled in Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich
- Studied in 1880
- Occupations
- university teachermechanical engineerinventorphysicist
- Biography
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Aurel Boleslav Stodola was a Slovak engineer, physicist, and inventor. He was a pioneer in the area of technical thermodynamics and its applications and published his book Die Dampfturbine (the steam turbine) in 1903. In addition to the thermodynamic issues involved in turbine design the book discussed aspects of fluid flow, vibration, stress analysis of plates, shells and rotating discs and stress concentrations at holes and fillets. Stodola was a professor of mechanical engineering at the Swiss Polytechnical Institute (now ETH) in Zurich. He maintained friendly contact with Albert Einstein. In 1892, Stodola founded the Laboratory for Energy Conversion.
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Georg Bednorz
- Occupations
- physicist
- Biography
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Johannes Georg Bednorz is a German physicist who, together with K. Alex Müller, discovered high-temperature superconductivity in ceramics, for which they shared the 1987 Nobel Prize in Physics.
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Felix Finkbeiner
- Enrolled in Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich
- Studied in 2018
- Occupations
- conservationistnon-fiction writerblogger
- Biography
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Felix Finkbeiner is a German environmentalist and the founder of the international tree-planting and environmental advocacy organization Plant-for-the-Planet.
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Charles Édouard Guillaume
- Occupations
- physicistresearcher
- Biography
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Charles Édouard Guillaume was a Swiss physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1920 "for the service he had rendered to precision measurements in physics by his discovery of anomalies in nickel steel alloys". In 1919, he gave the fifth Guthrie Lecture at the Institute of Physics in London with the title "The Anomaly of the Nickel-Steels".
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Mete Atatüre
- Enrolled in Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich
- Studied in 2004-2006
- Occupations
- physicistresearcher
- Biography
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Mete Atatüre is a Turkish physicist working on experimental solid-state quantum optics, in particular on the optical control of spin-photon coupling for quantum networks as well as investigation of many-body physics in atomically-thin heterostructures, with the aim of developing new materials and devices for quantum sensing applications.
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Géza Maróczy
- Enrolled in Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich
- Studied in 1902
- Occupations
- hydraulic engineernon-fiction writerchess player
- Biography
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Géza Maróczy was a Hungarian chess player, one of the leading players in the world in his time. He was one of the inaugural recipients of the International Grandmaster title from FIDE in 1950.
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Valerio Olgiati
- Occupations
- university teacherarchitect
- Biography
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Valerio Olgiati is a Swiss architect. He initially studied architecture at ETH Zurich, a public research university in Zurich, Switzerland.
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Robert Maillart
- Occupations
- structural engineercivil engineerarchitect
- Biography
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Robert Maillart was a Swiss civil engineer who revolutionized the use of structural reinforced concrete with such designs as the three-hinged arch and the deck-stiffened arch for bridges, and the beamless floor slab and mushroom ceiling for industrial buildings. His Salginatobel (1929–1930) and Schwandbach (1933) bridges changed the aesthetics and engineering of bridge construction dramatically and influenced decades of architects and engineers after him. In 1991 the Salginatobel Bridge was declared an International Historic Civil Engineering Landmark by the American Society of Civil Engineers.
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Paul Scherrer
- Occupations
- university teachernuclear physicistphysicistcrystallographer
- Biography
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Paul Hermann Scherrer was a Swiss physicist. Born in St. Gallen, Switzerland, he studied at Göttingen, Germany, before becoming a lecturer there. Later, Scherrer became head of the Department of Physics at ETH Zurich.
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John Houbolt
- Occupations
- engineermilitary flight engineer
- Biography
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John Cornelius Houbolt was an aerospace engineer credited with leading the team behind the lunar orbit rendezvous (LOR) mission mode, a concept that was used to successfully land humans on the Moon and return them to Earth. This flight path was chosen for the Apollo program in July 1962. The critical decision to use LOR was viewed as vital to ensuring that man reached the Moon by the end of the decade as proposed by President John F. Kennedy. In the process, LOR saved time and billions of dollars by efficiently using the available rocket and spacecraft technologies.
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Corrado Böhm
- Occupations
- engineeruniversity teacherlogiciancomputer scientistmathematician
- Biography
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Corrado Böhm was an Italian computer scientist and Professor Emeritus at the University of Rome "La Sapienza", known especially for his contributions to the theory of structured programming, constructive mathematics, combinatory logic, lambda calculus, and the semantics and implementation of functional programming languages.
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Andreas Küttel
- Enrolled in Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich
- 1999-2005 graduated with Master of Science
- Occupations
- physical education teacherski jumper
- Biography
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Andreas Küttel is a Swiss former ski jumper who currently works in the field of sports science at the University of Southern Denmark.
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Jacques Herzog
- Occupations
- architect
- Biography
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Jacques Herzog is a Swiss architect and a founding partner along with Pierre de Meuron of the architectural firm Herzog & de Meuron. Some of the most well-known projects by Herzog & de Meuron include the conversion of the Bankside Power Station into the Tate Modern in London, the Elbphilharmonie concert hall in Hamburg, and the Beijing National Stadium, also known as the "Bird's Nest", designed for the 2008 Olympics. Herzog, along with Pierre de Meuron, has received the Pritzker Architecture Prize and the Royal Gold Medal, among numerous other awards.
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Kaspar Villiger
- Occupations
- politician
- Biography
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Kaspar Villiger is a Swiss businessman, former tobacco manufacturer and politician. He served as a member of the Federal Council (Switzerland) since 1 February 1989 for The Liberals. Villiger served two terms as President of the Swiss Confederation in 1995 and again in 2002. He previously served on the Council of States (Switzerland) from 1987 to 1989 and on the National Council (Switzerland) from 1982 to 1987.
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Friedrich Hirzebruch
- Enrolled in Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich
- Studied in 1949-1950
- Occupations
- university teachermathematicianprofessor of mathematics
- Biography
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Friedrich Ernst Peter Hirzebruch ForMemRS was a German mathematician, working in the fields of topology, complex manifolds and algebraic geometry, and a leading figure in his generation. He has been described as "the most important mathematician in Germany of the postwar period."
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Kazys Škirpa
- Occupations
- politicianuniversity teacherdiplomat
- Biography
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Kazys Škirpa was a Lithuanian military officer and diplomat. He is best known as the founder of the Lithuanian Activist Front (LAF) and his involvement in the attempt to establish Lithuanian independence in June 1941.
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Luigi Snozzi
- Occupations
- teacherarchitect
- Biography
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Luigi Snozzi was a Swiss architect, born in Mendrisio, Ticino. He worked in Locarno and Lugano.
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Stefanos Manos
- Occupations
- politician
- Biography
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Stefanos Manos is a Greek politician, former member of the Hellenic Parliament, and a former government minister.
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Christophe Darbellay
- Occupations
- politician
- Biography
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Christophe Darbellay is a Swiss politician, member of The Centre.
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Aurelio Galfetti
- Occupations
- university teacherarchitect
- Biography
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Aurelio Galfetti was a Swiss architect.
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Einat Kalisch-Rotem
- Occupations
- politicianurban plannerarchitect
- Biography
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Einat Kalisch-Rotem is an Israeli urban planner and politician who served as mayor of Haifa from 2018 to 2024. She was the first female mayor to lead any of the three major cities in Israel.
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August Kundt
- Occupations
- physicistuniversity teacher
- Biography
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August Adolf Eduard Eberhard Kundt was a German physicist.
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Annemarie Huber-Hotz
- Occupations
- ethnologistpoliticiansociologist
- Biography
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Annemarie Huber-Hotz was a Swiss politician who served as the Federal Chancellor of Switzerland between 2000 and 2007. She was nominated by the FDP for the office, and elected to it on 15 December 1999. In 2011, she became President of the Swiss Red Cross and ex officio vice-president of the IFRC.
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David Ruelle
- Occupations
- physicistmathematician
- Biography
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David Pierre Ruelle is a Belgian and naturalized French mathematical physicist. He has worked on statistical physics and dynamical systems. With Floris Takens, Ruelle coined the term strange attractor, and developed a new theory of turbulence.
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Albert Eschenmoser
- Enrolled in Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich
- In 1952 graduated with Doctor of Philosophy
- Occupations
- university teacherchemist
- Biography
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Albert Jakob Eschenmoser was a Swiss organic chemist, best known for his work on the synthesis of complex heterocyclic natural compounds, most notably vitamin B12. In addition to his significant contributions to the field of organic synthesis, Eschenmoser pioneered work in the Origins of Life (OoL) field with work on the synthetic pathways of artificial nucleic acids. Before retiring in 2009, Eschenmoser held tenured teaching positions at the ETH Zurich and The Skaggs Institute for Chemical Biology at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California as well as visiting professorships at the University of Chicago, Cambridge University, and Harvard.
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Armand Borel
- Enrolled in Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich
- Studied in 1942-1947
- Occupations
- topologistuniversity teachermathematician
- Biography
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Armand Borel was a Swiss mathematician, born in La Chaux-de-Fonds, and was a permanent professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, United States from 1957 to 1993. He worked in algebraic topology, in the theory of Lie groups, and was one of the creators of the contemporary theory of linear algebraic groups.
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Nienke Brinkman
- Enrolled in Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich
- Studied in 2016-2018
- Occupations
- marathon runnergeophysicistlong-distance runnertrail runner
- Biography
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Nienke Brinkman is a Dutch long-distance runner, both on the road as well as on trails. She won the bronze medal in the marathon at the 2022 European Athletics Championships, which was her first international medal, and has a personal best of 2:22:51 which she ran at the Rotterdam Marathon.
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André Blattmann
- Occupations
- military officer
- Biography
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André Blattmann was the Swiss Lieutenant General and Chief of the Armed Forces from 1 March 2009 (ad interim since 20 August 2008) until 31 December 2016. He led the Swiss army after the leave of Roland Nef ad interim on 25 July 2008.
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Martin Vetterli
- Occupations
- computer scientistresearcherengineerprofessor
- Biography
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Martin Vetterli is a professor of engineering of École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland, and was the former president of EPFL between 2017 and 2024. He was also formerly the president of the National Research Council of the Swiss National Science Foundation.
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Toni Rüttimann
- Occupations
- engineercivil engineer
- Biography
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Toni Rüttimann is a Swiss bridge builder who works in Southeast Asia and in Latin America, where he is known as Toni el Suizo (Toni the Swiss).
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Pierre de Meuron
- Occupations
- university teacherarchitect
- Biography
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Pierre de Meuron is a Swiss architect and co-founder, alongside Jacques Herzog, of the architectural firm Herzog & de Meuron.
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Claude Bourdet
- Occupations
- French resistance fighterjournalistwriter
- Biography
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Claude Bourdet was a writer, journalist, polemist, and militant French politician.
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Jean-Louis Jeanmaire
- Occupations
- university teachermilitary officer
- Biography
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Jean-Louis Jeanmaire was a brigadier in the Swiss army who passed highly classified Swiss military secrets to the Soviet Union from 1962 up until his retirement at 65 in 1975.
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Christian Menn
- Occupations
- civil engineer
- Biography
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Christian Menn was a renowned Swiss civil engineer and bridge designer. He was involved in the construction of around 100 bridges worldwide, but the focus of his work was in eastern Switzerland, especially in canton Graubünden. He continued the tradition of and had a decisive influence on Swiss bridge building. The technical and aesthetic possibilities of prestressed concrete were most fully realized with his bridges in Switzerland.
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Bastien Girod
- Occupations
- politician
- Biography
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Bastien Girod is a Swiss sustainability researcher, corporate and industry advisor and politician who serves as a member of the National Council for the Green Party since 2007. In August 2024, Girod announced to step back from office, and designated Meret Schneider as his successor.
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Pierre Weiss
- Occupations
- physicistuniversity teacher
- Biography
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Pierre-Ernest Weiss was a French physicist who specialized in magnetism. He developed the domain theory of ferromagnetism in 1907. Weiss domains and the Weiss magneton are named after him. Weiss also developed the molecular or mean field theory, which is often called Weiss-mean-field theory, that led to the discovery of the Curie–Weiss law. Alongside Auguste Piccard, Pierre Weiss is considered one of the first discoverers of the magnetocaloric effect in 1917.
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Gion A. Caminada
- Occupations
- university teacherarchitect
- Biography
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Gion Antoni Caminada is a Swiss architect and professor of architecture at the ETH Zurich. He is known for his works in and around the Swiss village of Vrin, including the Stiva da morts mortuary. Many of Caminada's projects are built of wood in a minimalist style mixing modern design with traditional Swiss methods and materials.
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Boris Pavlovich Belousov
- Occupations
- physicistchemistbiophysicist
- Biography
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Boris Pavlovich Belousov was a Soviet chemist and biophysicist who discovered the Belousov–Zhabotinsky reaction (BZ reaction) in the early 1950s. His work initiated the field of modern nonlinear chemical dynamics.
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Walther Ritz
- Occupations
- physicistmathematician
- Biography
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Walther Heinrich Wilhelm Ritz was a Swiss theoretical physicist. He is most famous for his work with Johannes Rydberg on the Rydberg–Ritz combination principle. Ritz is also known for the variational method named after him, the Ritz method.
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Lino Guzzella
- Occupations
- engineeruniversity teacher
- Biography
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Lino Guzzella, born in 1957, is a binational professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland. He has been a full Professor of Thermotronics in the Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering at the institute for dynamic systems and control (IDSC) since 1999. In his research, Lino Guzzella works on modelling and model-assisted optimisation and control of energy technology and mechatronic systems.
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Albert Heim
- Enrolled in Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich
- In 1869 graduated with Doctor of Sciences in natural science
- In 1871 graduated with postdoctoral degree in geophysics
- Occupations
- non-fiction writeruniversity teachergeologist
- Biography
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Albert Heim was a Swiss geologist, noted for his three-volume Geologie der Schweiz.
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Costin Nenițescu
- Enrolled in Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich
- Studied in 1920-1922
- Occupations
- university teacherchemist
- Biography
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Costin D. Nenițescu was a prominent Romanian chemist, and a professor at the Politehnica University of Bucharest. He was a titular member of the Romanian Academy, a corresponding member of the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin, and a member of the Leopoldina Academy of Natural Scientists in Halle-Saale.
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Arthur Stoll
- Occupations
- university teacherart collectorbiochemistchemist
- Biography
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Arthur Stoll was a Swiss biochemist.
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Michael Heidelberger
- Occupations
- immunologistuniversity teacherchemist
- Biography
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Michael Heidelberger ForMemRS was an American immunologist, often regarded as the father of modern immunology. He and Oswald Avery showed that the polysaccharides of pneumococcus are antigens, enabling him to show that antibodies are proteins. He spent most his early career at Columbia University and comparable time in his later years on the faculty of New York University. In 1934 and 1936 he received the Guggenheim Fellowship. In 1967 he received the National Medal of Science, and then he earned the Lasker Award for basic medical research in 1953 and again in 1978. His papers are held at the National Library of Medicine in Bethesda, Maryland.
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Konrad Steffen
- Occupations
- university teacherglaciologistacademic
- Biography
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Konrad "Koni" Steffen was a Swiss glaciologist, known for his research into the impact of global warming on the Arctic.
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Christian Mumenthaler
- Years
- 1969-.. (age 56)
- Occupations
- business executive
- Biography
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Christian Mumenthaler is a Swiss citizen and former Group Chief Executive Officer of Swiss Re, a position he has held since 1 July 2016 until 30 June 2024.
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Karl Moser
- Enrolled in Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich
- 1878-1882 studied architecture
- Occupations
- university teacherarchitect
- Biography
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Karl Moser was an architect from Switzerland.
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Aline Trede
- Occupations
- politician
- Biography
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Aline Trede is a Swiss-German politician who currently serves on the National Council (Switzerland) for the Green Party since 2018. She previously served one term between 2013 and 2015 and also on the City of Berne Parliament from 2009 to 2012.
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Christian Kerez
- Occupations
- photographeruniversity teacherarchitect
- Biography
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Christian Georg Kerez is a Swiss architect, architectural photographer and professor.
