Jean-Luc Godard is a Franco-Swiss filmmaker and one of the most influential members of the Nouvelle Vague, or "French New Wave". Born in Paris to Franco-Swiss parents, he was educated in Nyon, later studying at the Lycée Rohmer, and the Sor...

Max Miedinger was a Swiss typeface designer. He was famous for creating the Neue Haas Grotesk typeface in 1957 that was renamed Helvetica in 1960. Marketed as a symbol of cutting-edge Swiss technology, Helvetica achieved immediate global su...

Albert Hofmann was a Swiss scientist best known for having been the first to synthesize, ingest and learn of the psychedelic effects of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD). Hofmann authored more than 100 scientific articles and wrote a number...

Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac was an English theoretical physicist who is regarded as one of the most significant physicists of the 20th century. Dirac made fundamental contributions to the early development of both quantum mechanics and qua...

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, Zwick...

Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, better known as Le Corbusier, was an architect, designer, urbanist, and writer, famous for being one of the pioneers of what is now called modern architecture. He was born in Switzerland and became a French citize...

Paul Klee was a Swiss German artist. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included Expressionism, Cubism, and Surrealism. Klee was a natural draftsman who experimented with and eventually deeply explored color...

Carl Gustav Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist and founder of Analytical Psychology. Often mentioned along with Sigmund Freud, with whom he initially collaborated, Carl Jung was one of the first and most widely read writers of the twentieth cent...

Luigi Lucheni was an Italian anarchist who assassinated the Austrian Empress, Elisabeth (commonly referred to as Sissi, Viennese for Elisabeth), in 1898. Lucheni believed in propaganda of the deed, a philosophy advocating spreading beliefs...

César Ritz was a famous Swiss hotelier and founder of several hotels, most famously the Hôtel Ritz, in Paris and The Ritz Hotel in London. His nickname was "king of hoteliers, and hotelier to kings," and it is from his name and that of his...

Henri Dunant, the man whose vision led to the creation of the worldwide Red Cross and Red Crescent movement; he went from riches to rags but became joint recipient of the first Nobel peace prize. Present at the end of the battle of Solfe...

Henri Nestlé was a German-born Swiss confectioner and the founder of Nestlé, the world's largest food and beverage company, as well as one of the main creators of condensed milk. Before Nestlé turned 22 in 1836, he had completed a four-y...

Johann Ludwig (also known as John Lewis, Jean Louis) Burckhardt was a Swiss traveller and orientalist. He wrote his letters in French and signed Louis. He is best known for rediscovering the ruins of the city of Petra in Jordan. During h...

Abraham-Louis Breguet or Bréguet, born in Neuchâtel in Switzerland, was a horologist who made many innovations in the course of a career in watchmaking in France. He is the founder of Swiss luxury watch brand Bréguet. Breguet became a membe...

Johann Heinrich Lambert (Jean-Henri Lambert in French) was a Swiss polymath who made important contributions to the subjects of mathematics, physics (particularly optics), philosophy, astronomy and map projections. Edward Tufte calls him an...