Famous People From Switzerland
- In the realm of tennis, Roger Federer stands as a towering figure, etching his name in history with his extraordinary prowess and sportsmanship. Born on August 8, 1981, in Basel, Switzerland, Federer's journey to stardom began at a young age when he picked up a racket and fell in love with the sport. His talent was unmistakable, and it wasn't long before his skills were honed under the guidance of Australian coach Peter Carter. Federer's professional career kicked off in 1998, and by 2003, he claimed his first Grand Slam win at Wimbledon, thereby sparking a legacy that would captivate audiences worldwide. Through his career, Federer has amassed an astounding 20 Grand Slam titles, a feat which includes a record-breaking eight Wimbledon victories. His rivalry with other greats of the game, such as Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic, has created some of the most memorable matches in tennis history. Beyond his exceptional skills on the court, Federer is equally recognized for his philanthropy. In 2003, he established the Roger Federer Foundation, which strives to provide educational opportunities for children living in poverty-stricken areas. His humanitarian efforts have garnered him respect beyond his sporting achievements, making him not just a tennis legend, but also a champion for social causes. Thus, the tale of Roger Federer is one of relentless pursuit of excellence, both on and off the court.
- Birthplace: Basel, Switzerland
- Kat Graham, born Katerina Alexandre Hartford Graham on September 5th, 1989 in Geneva, Switzerland, has made her mark as one of Hollywood's most multifaceted talents. The Swiss-born American actress, singer, dancer and model is widely known for her role as Bonnie Bennett on The CW supernatural drama series The Vampire Diaries, a role that earned her widespread recognition and acclaim. Not only is she adept at portraying complex characters on screen, but her ability to connect with audiences and deliver electrifying performances is what distinguishes her from her contemporaries. Graham embarked on her entertainment career at a tender age, showcasing her artistic abilities across multiple domains. Her first major acting role was in the Disney Channel comedy series Lizzie McGuire in 2002, but it was her recurring role in The Vampire Diaries between 2009 and 2017 that catapulted her into the limelight. Additionally, her big-screen appearances include roles in films such as 17 Again, The Roommate, Honey 2, and All Eyez on Me, where she played the role of Jada Pinkett. Aside from her illustrious acting career, Graham also blossomed as a music artist. She released her debut EP The Remixes under A&M/Octone Records in 2010 and followed this up with her full-length debut album Roxbury Drive in 2015. Her musical prowess extends beyond singing, as she also writes songs and produces music. Her music spans different genres, including pop, R&B, and dance, reflecting her versatility and dynamic range.
- Birthplace: Geneva, Switzerland
- Sofia Milos (; born 27 September 1969) is a Swiss-born Italian/Greek actress. She is best known for her role as Yelina Salas on CSI: Miami. She has also had a role on The Sopranos as Camorra Boss Annalisa Zucca, as well as roles in TV series such as Curb your Enthusiasm, Friends and ER.
- Birthplace: Zürich, Switzerland
- Carl Gustav Jung ( YUUNG, German: [kaɐ̯l ˈjʊŋ]; 26 July 1875 – 6 June 1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology. Jung's work was influential in the fields of psychiatry, anthropology, archaeology, literature, philosophy, and religious studies. Jung worked as a research scientist at the famous Burghölzli hospital, under Eugen Bleuler. During this time, he came to the attention of Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. The two men conducted a lengthy correspondence and collaborated, for a while, on a joint vision of human psychology. Freud saw the younger Jung as the heir he had been seeking to take forward his "new science" of psychoanalysis and to this end secured his appointment as President of his newly founded International Psychoanalytical Association. Jung's research and personal vision, however, made it impossible for him to bend to his older colleague's doctrine, and a schism became inevitable. This division was personally painful for Jung, and it was to have historic repercussions lasting well into the modern day. Among the central concepts of analytical psychology is individuation—the lifelong psychological process of differentiation of the self out of each individual's conscious and unconscious elements. Jung considered it to be the main task of human development. He created some of the best known psychological concepts, including synchronicity, archetypal phenomena, the collective unconscious, the psychological complex, and extraversion and introversion. Jung was also an artist, craftsman and builder as well as a prolific writer. Many of his works were not published until after his death and some are still awaiting publication.
- Birthplace: Kesswil, Switzerland
- Jean-Paul Marat (French: [ʒɑ̃pɔl maʁa]; 24 May 1743 – 13 July 1793) was a French political theorist, physician, and scientist. He was a journalist and politician during the French Revolution. He was a vigorous defender of the sans-culottes and seen as a radical voice. He published his views in pamphlets, placards and newspapers. His periodical L'Ami du peuple (Friend of the People) made him an unofficial link with the radical Jacobin group that came to power after June 1793. Through his journalism, renowned for its fierce tone, advocacy of basic human rights for the poorest members of society, and uncompromising stance toward the new leaders and institutions of the revolution, he called for prisoners of the Revolution to be killed before they could be freed. His call led to the September Massacres. Marat was assassinated by Charlotte Corday, a Girondin sympathizer, while taking a medicinal bath for his debilitating skin condition. Corday was executed four days later for his assassination, on 17 July 1793. In death, Marat became an icon to the Jacobins as a revolutionary martyr. He is portrayed in Jacques-Louis David's famous painting, The Death of Marat.
- Birthplace: Boudry, Switzerland
- Michelle Yvonne Hunziker (Swiss German: [miˌʃɛl ˈhʊntsɪkər], Italian: [miʃˌʃɛl ˈ(h)untsiker]; born 24 January 1977) is a Swiss-Dutch naturalized Italian television hostess, actress, model and singer.
- Birthplace: Sorengo, Switzerland
- Prince Shah Karim Al Hussaini, Aga Khan IV, (Arabic: شاه كريم الحسيني، الآقاخان الرابع; Persian: شاه کریم حسینی، آقاخان چهارم; Urdu: شاه کریم حسینی، آقاخان چهارم; Aga Khan is also transliterated as Aqa Khan and Agha Khan; born 13 December 1936) is the 49th and current Imam of Nizari Ismailism, a denomination of Isma'ilism within Shia Islam with an estimated 10–15 million adherents (10–12% of the world's Shia Muslim population). The Aga Khan is a business magnate with British citizenship, as well as a racehorse owner and breeder. He has held this position of Imam, under the title of Aga Khan IV, since 11 July 1957, when, at the age of 20, he succeeded his grandfather, Sir Sultan Muhammad Shah Aga Khan III. It is believed that the Aga Khan is a direct lineal descendant of the Islamic prophet Muhammad through Muhammad's cousin and son-in-law, Ali, considered the first Imam in Shia Islam, and Ali's wife Fatima az-Zahra, Muhammad's daughter from his first marriage. Forbes describes the Aga Khan as one of the world's ten richest royals with an estimated net worth of US$3 billion. Additionally he is unique among the richest royals as he does not rule over a geographic territory. Among the goals the Aga Khan has said he works toward are the elimination of global poverty; the promotion and implementation of religious pluralism; the advancement of the status of women; and the honouring of Islamic art and architecture. He is the founder and chairman of the Aga Khan Development Network, one of the largest private development networks in the world. The organisation works toward improvement of the environment, health, education, architecture, culture, microfinance, rural development, disaster reduction, the promotion of private-sector enterprise and the revitalisation of historic cities.Since his ascension to the Imamate of Nizari Ismailis in 1957, the Aga Khan has been involved in complex political and economic changes which have affected his Nizari Ismaili followers, including the independence of African countries from colonial rule, expulsion of Asians from Uganda, the independence of Central Asian countries such as Tajikistan from the former Soviet Union and the continuous turmoil in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Aga Khan IV became the first faith leader to address the Joint Session of the Parliament of Canada on 27 February 2014.
- Birthplace: Geneva, Switzerland
- Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (July 8, 1926 – August 24, 2004) was a Swiss-American psychiatrist, a pioneer in near-death studies and the author of the groundbreaking book On Death and Dying (1969), where she first discussed her theory of the five stages of grief, also known as the "Kübler-Ross model".She was a 2007 inductee into the National Women's Hall of Fame. She was the recipient of nineteen honorary degrees and by July 1982 had taught, in her estimation, 125,000 students in death and dying courses in colleges, seminaries, medical schools, hospitals, and social-work institutions. In 1970, she delivered an Ingersoll Lecture at Harvard University on the theme On Death and Dying.
- Birthplace: Zürich, Switzerland
- Claude Nicollier (born 2 September 1944 in Vevey, Switzerland) is the first astronaut from Switzerland. He has flown on four Space Shuttle missions. His first spaceflight (STS-46) was in 1992, and his final spaceflight (STS-103) was in 1999. He took part in two servicing missions to the Hubble Space Telescope (called STS-61 and STS-103). During his final spaceflight he participated in a spacewalk, becoming the first European Space Agency astronaut to do so during a Space Shuttle mission (previous ESA astronauts conducted spacewalks aboard Mir, see List of spacewalks and moonwalks 1965–1999). In 2000 he was assigned to the Astronaut Office Extravehicular Activity Branch, while maintaining a position as Lead ESA Astronaut in Houston. Nicollier retired from ESA in April 2007. He was appointed full professor of Spatial Technology at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne on 28 March 2007.He was an expert board member of Swiss Space Systems, until company's dissolution.
- Birthplace: Vevey, Switzerland
- Karl Barth (; German: [baɐ̯t]; (1886-05-10)May 10, 1886 – (1968-12-10)December 10, 1968) was a Swiss Reformed theologian who is most well known for his landmark The Epistle to the Romans, involvement in the Confessing Church, authorship of the Barmen Declaration, and especially his five volume theological summa the Church Dogmatics (published in twelve part-volumes between 1932-1967). Barth's influence expanded well beyond the academic realm to mainstream culture, leading him to be featured on the cover of Time on April 20, 1962 and Pope Pius XII said Barth was “the greatest theologian since Thomas Aquinas.”Barth's theological career began while he was known as the "Red Pastor from Safenwil" when he wrote his first edition of his The Epistle to the Romans (1919). Beginning with his second edition of The Epistle to the Romans (1921), Barth began to depart from his former training – and began to garner substantial worldwide acclaim – with a liberal theology he inherited from Adolf von Harnack, Friedrich Schleiermacher and others. Barth influenced many significant theologians such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer who supported the Confessing Church, and Jürgen Moltmann, Helmut Gollwitzer, James H. Cone, Wolfhart Pannenberg, Rudolf Bultmann, Thomas F. Torrance, Hans Küng, and also Reinhold Niebuhr, Jacques Ellul, Stanley Hauerwas, and novelists such as John Updike and Miklós Szentkuthy. Among many other areas, Barth has also had a profound influence on modern Christian ethics. He has influenced the work of ethicists such as Stanley Hauerwas, John Howard Yoder, Jacques Ellul and Oliver O'Donovan.
- Birthplace: Basel, Switzerland
- Sigismond Thalberg (8 January 1812 – 27 April 1871) was a composer and one of the most famous virtuoso pianists of the 19th century.
- Birthplace: Geneva, Switzerland
- Dieter Bohlen (German pronunciation: [ˈdiːtɐ ˈboːlən]; born Dieter Günter Bohlen on 7 February 1954) is a German musician, songwriter, record producer, and television personality. Often referred to as the "Pop-Titan" in the German-speaking press, he first achieved fame as a member of pop duo Modern Talking in the 1980s, and has since produced numerous German and international artists. He is also a judge on casting shows Deutschland sucht den Superstar and Das Supertalent, having been present on all seasons of both shows.
- Birthplace: Berne, Germany
- Siegfried Helferich Richard Wagner (6 June 1869 – 4 August 1930) was a German composer and conductor, the son of Richard Wagner. He was an opera composer and the artistic director of the Bayreuth Festival from 1908 to 1930.
- Birthplace: Lucerne, Switzerland
- Imposing silent star who first gained prominence with Max Reinhardt's Berlin theater in the teens. Jannings appeared in several superior early German films, particularly those directed by Ernst Lubitsch, and was outstanding as the humiliated doorman in F.W. Murnau's "The Last Laugh" (1924). He moved to Hollywood in 1926 and won an Academy Award for Josef Von Sternberg's "The Last Command" (1928), but after the advent of sound his inadequate English forced a return to Germany. There he turned in his most famous performance, as Professor Rath in Von Sternberg's "The Blue Angel" (1930). In 1938 Jannings accepted Goebbels' invitation to head the Tobis Film Company, which produced Nazi propaganda features such as Veidt Harlan's "Der Herrscher" (1937) and Hans Steinhoff's "Ohm Kruger" (1941). The Allied authorities refused to allow Jannings to work after the war, though a subsequent inquiry into his fascist affiliations cleared him of any serious involvement with the Nazi regime.
- Birthplace: Rorschach, Switzerland
- Joseph Joachim Raff (27 May 1822 – 24 or 25 June 1882) was a German-Swiss composer, teacher and pianist.
- Birthplace: Lachen, Switzerland
Charles Ricketts
Dec. at 65 (1866-1931)Charles de Sousy Ricketts (2 October 1866 – 7 October 1931) was a versatile English artist, illustrator, author and printer, and is best known for his work as book designer and typographer from 1896 to 1904 with the Vale Press, and his work in the theatre as a set and costume designer.- Birthplace: Geneva, Switzerland
- Tariq Ramadan (Arabic: طارق رمضان; born 26 August 1962) is a Swiss Muslim academic, philosopher, and writer. He is Professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies at St Antony's College, Oxford and the Faculty of Theology and Religion, University of Oxford, but as of 2018 is taking an agreed leave of absence. He is a visiting professor at the Faculty of Islamic Studies at Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Qatar, and the Université Mundiapolis in Morocco. He is also a senior research fellow at Doshisha University in Japan. He is the director of the Research Centre of Islamic Legislation and Ethics (CILE), based in Doha. He is a member of the UK Foreign Office Advisory Group on Freedom of Religion or Belief. He was elected by Time magazine in 2000 as one of the seven religious innovators of the 21st century and in 2004 as one of the 100 most influential people in the world and by Foreign Policy readers (2005, 2006, 2008-2010, 2012-2015) as one of the top 100 most influential thinkers in the world and Global Thinkers. Ramadan describes himself as a "Salafi reformist".In November 2017, Tariq Ramadan took agreed leave of absence from Oxford University to contest allegations of rape and sexual misconduct. The university's statement noted that an "agreed leave of absence implies no acceptance or presumption of guilt". In February 2018 he was formally charged with raping two women. He denies wrongdoing and is suing one of his accusers for slander. He is currently in jail awaiting trial.
- Birthplace: Geneva, Switzerland
- Claude Janiak (born 30 October 1948) is a Swiss politician of Polish origin, lawyer and President of the Swiss National Council for the 2005/2006 term. Member of the Social Democratic Party (SPS), he was elected to the National Council in 1999 in the canton of Basel-Land and reelected in 2003. In 2007, he was elected to the Swiss Council of States. He studied law at the University of Basel (1967–1971) and in London. In 1975, he completed his doctorate degree. He is attorney-at-law in Binningen since 1978. From 1991, he is a member of the board of the cantonal bank of Basel-Land (Basellandschaftliche Kantonalbank). He was a member of the cantonal parliament of Basel-Landschaft (1981–1987 and 1994–1999, president 1998/1999), of the city parliament of Binningen (1988–1995), and of the executive of Bubendorf (1976–1979). Born in Basel of Polish father and a Swiss mother, he acquired Swiss citizenship only in 1956 (he has also been a Polish citizen since birth). Today, he is a citizen of Basel and Binningen. He was the first openly homosexual President of the Swiss National Council and lives in a registered partnership.
- Birthplace: Basel, Switzerland
- Hans Küng (pronounced [ˈhans ˈkʏŋ]; born 19 March 1928) is a Swiss Catholic priest, theologian, and author. Since 1995 he has been President of the Foundation for a Global Ethic (Stiftung Weltethos). He is notable for his rejection of the doctrine of papal infallibility. Although Küng is not officially allowed to teach Catholic theology, his priestly faculties have not been revoked. In 1979, he had to leave the Catholic faculty, but remained at the University of Tübingen as a professor of ecumenical theology, serving as an emeritus professor since 1996.
- Birthplace: Sursee, Switzerland
- Hans Urs von Balthasar (12 August 1905 – 26 June 1988) was a Swiss theologian and Catholic priest who is considered one of the most important Roman Catholic theologians of the 20th century.
- Birthplace: Lucerne, Switzerland
- Jean Piaget (UK: , US: , French: [ʒɑ̃ pjaʒɛ]; 9 August 1896 – 16 September 1980) was a Swiss psychologist known for his work on child development. Piaget's theory of cognitive development and epistemological view are together called "genetic epistemology". Piaget placed great importance on the education of children. As the Director of the International Bureau of Education, he declared in 1934 that "only education is capable of saving our societies from possible collapse, whether violent, or gradual." His theory of child development is studied in pre-service education programs. Educators continue to incorporate constructivist-based strategies. Piaget created the International Center for Genetic Epistemology in Geneva in 1955 while on the faculty of the University of Geneva and directed the Center until his death in 1980. The number of collaborations that its founding made possible, and their impact, ultimately led to the Center being referred to in the scholarly literature as "Piaget's factory".According to Ernst von Glasersfeld, Jean Piaget was "the great pioneer of the constructivist theory of knowing." However, his ideas did not become widely popularized until the 1960s. This then led to the emergence of the study of development as a major sub-discipline in psychology. By the end of the 20th century, Piaget was second only to B. F. Skinner as the most cited psychologist of that era.
- Birthplace: Neuchâtel, Switzerland
- Vincent Perez (born 10 June 1964) is a Swiss actor, director and photographer. He is best known internationally for playing the title character, Ashe Corven, in The Crow: City of Angels, and for starring in Queen of the Damned, playing Marius de Romanus. Some of his notable films in French cinema include Cyrano de Bergerac, Le Bossu, La Reine Margot and Indochine.
- Birthplace: Switzerland, Lausanne
- Arthur Cohn (born February 4, 1927, in Basel, Switzerland) is a film producer.
- Birthplace: Basel, Switzerland
- An exotic international leading lady, the beautiful Marthe Keller originally harbored dreams of a career as a ballerina. A skiing accident at age 16 dashed those hopes but she found a creative outlet in acting. After studying philosophy and sociology at university in Frankfurt, Germany, the Swiss-born Keller trained for the stage at Munich's Stanislavsky School and Berlin's Brecht Theatre School. She honed her craft in several German TV productions and on stage with the Heidelberg Repertory Company and the Schiller Theatre in Berlin. By 1968, Keller had moved to France where she quickly established her screen reputation in two Philippe de Broca films, "Le Diable pour le queue/The Devil By the Tail" (1968) and "Caprice de Marie/Give Her the Moon" (1969). Solidifying her reputation as a versatile and gifted performer was her turn as three generations in the same family in Claude Lelouch's "Toute une vie/And Now My Love" (1974).
- Birthplace: Basel, Switzerland
- Hermann Rorschach (German: [ˈhɛrman ˈroːrʃax]; 8 November 1884 – 1 April 1922) was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. His education in art helped to spur the development of a set of inkblots that were used experimentally to measure various unconscious parts of the subject's personality. His method has come to be referred to as the Rorschach test, iterations of which have continued to be used over the years to help identify personality, psychotic, and neurological disorders. Rorschach continued to refine the test until his premature death at age 37. Rorschach lived a short yet successful life while influencing the world of psychology.
- Birthplace: Zürich, Switzerland
Marco Tempest
Age: 60Marco Tempest (born December 3, 1964) is a Swiss magician based in New York City. He is known for his multimedia magic and use of interactive technology and computer graphics in his illusions and presentations. He stars in the eight-part television series The Virtual Magician which has been broadcast in over 50 countries.- Birthplace: Zürich, Switzerland
- Charles Édouard Dutoit (born 7 October 1936) is a Swiss conductor. In September 2018, he was named principal guest conductor of the St Petersburg Philharmonic as of the season 2018-2019. In 2017, he became the 103rd recipient of the Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medal Award. Dutoit is the former artistic director and principal conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, conductor emeritus of the NHK Symphony Orchestra of Tokyo, and was conductor laureate of the Philadelphia Orchestra until the orchestra stripped him of the title after multiple allegations of sexual misconduct. He is the former music director of the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal and the Orchestre National de France, and as of 2017, conductor emeritus of the Verbier Music Festival Orchestra. He is an honorary member of the Ravel Foundation in France and the Stravinsky Foundation in Switzerland. In December 2017, following allegations that Dutoit had sexually assaulted four women, orchestras either cancelled engagements or severed ties with Dutoit. He withdrew from his concerts with the Chicago Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, and New York Philharmonic. The next month several other women came forward with further claims of sexual misconduct. Dutoit issued a statement denying the allegations.
- Birthplace: Lausanne, Switzerland
- Prince Egon von Fürstenberg (Eduard Egon Peter Paul Giovanni Prinz zu Fürstenberg, Prinz Egon zu Fürstenberg; 29 June 1946 – 11 June 2004) was a socialite, banker, fashion and interior designer, and member of the German aristocratic family Fürstenberg. In 1969, he married fashion designer Diane von Fürstenberg, with whom he had two children Prince Alexandre Egon (b. 25 January 1970) and Princess Tatiana Desirée (b. 16 February 1971). The couple separated in 1973 and divorced in 1983. The same year, he married Lynn Marshall (born ca. 1950), an American and a Mississippi native who was co-owner of a flower shop; the couple remained childless. Between his marriages, Egon also had a male partner: He was frank about his bisexuality and the openness of his first marriage.Fürstenberg wrote two books on fashion and interior design (The Power Look, 1978, and The Power Look at Home: Decorating for Men, 1980) as well as opened an interior design firm. He died in Rome on 11 June 2004 of liver cancer deriving from an earlier hepatitis C infection. He was survived by his children and both wives.
- Birthplace: Lausanne, Switzerland
- Sarah Meier (born 4 May 1984) is a Swiss former figure skater. She is the 2011 European champion, a two-time European silver medalist (2007 & 2008), the 2006 Grand Prix Final bronze medalist, and an eight-time Swiss national champion (2000–2001, 2003, 2005–2008, 2010).
- Birthplace: Bülach, Switzerland
- Li Tobler (30 November 1947 – 19 May 1975) was a Swiss stage actress and model for the artist H. R. Giger. Two of his major paintings were portraits of Li, and her face can also be recognised in some of his semi-abstract subjects where man and machine are fused into one. Li lived with Giger in squalor, often inside condemned buildings, eventually becoming romantically involved. Although their relationship was open, it remained deeply intense and creatively inspiring to Giger. But Li suffered from emotional insecurity, heavy drug-dependence and physical exhaustion from theatrical tours. She committed suicide at age 27 as a result of constant depression. According to Giger, she had wished her life to be "short and intense".
- Birthplace: Switzerland
- Peter Giger (born April 12, 1939 in Zurich) is a Swiss percussionist and bandleader, formerly of the band de:Dzyan.
- Birthplace: Zürich, Switzerland
- Carmen Schäfer (born 8 January 1981 in Davos) is a Swiss curler. She plays third for Mirjam Ott. Schäfer had a fairly successful Junior career. She was the alternate on the Swiss team (skipped by Silvana Tirinzoni) that won the 1999 World Junior Championships, but she did not play any games. Schäfer skipped the Swiss team at the 2000 and 2001 World Juniors, finishing fourth and winning the bronze medal respectively. In 2000, she lost to the U.S. team (skipped by Laura Delaney) in the bronze medal game, 8–5. She had to beat Moe Meguro's Japanese team to capture the bronze in 2001, winning the game 5–4. In 2007, Schäfer joined Ott's team. They finished in fourth place at the 2007 European Curling Championships. They avenged their defeat at the 2008 Ford World Women's Curling Championship when they won the bronze medal; once again she had to beat Japan and their skip, Meguro. The Japanese had beaten them in the 3–4 game, but in the bronze medal rematch, had slipped. At the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games, her team, again skipped by Mirjam Ott, finished in fourth place, as Ott's touch completely deserted her late in the semi-final and bronze medal matches.In 2008, Schäfer played in the Continental Cup of Curling.
- Birthplace: Davos, Switzerland
Ubolratana Rajakanya
Age: 73Princess Ubol Ratana (Thai: อุบลรัตน, RTGS: Ubonrat, pronounced [ʔùʔ.bōn.rát]; born 5 April 1951) is a member of the Thai royal family. She is the eldest child of King Bhumibol Adulyadej and Queen Sirikit. In 1972, she married Peter Ladd Jensen, an American, and settled in the United States, in the process, losing her royal title. The couple divorced in 1998 whereupon she resumed her royal duties and position within the Thai court. She is styled in English as Princess Ubol Ratana, without the style Her Royal Highness.In 2001, she permanently returned to Thailand after a series of visits in the years following her divorce. Almost immediately, she began to fulfill her royal duties by taking part in many ceremonies. She started many charitable foundations that focused on improving the quality of life for the disadvantaged.In February 2019, in an "unprecedented" move, Ubol Ratana announced her candidacy for Prime Minister of Thailand in the 2019 general election, running as a candidate of the Thaksin-allied Thai Raksa Chart Party. Later that same day, her younger brother King Vajiralongkorn issued an emergency royal decree stating that her candidacy is "inappropriate" and "unconstitutional". Thailand’s election commission then disqualified her from running for prime minister, formally putting an end to her candidacy.- Birthplace: Switzerland, Lausanne
- Yangzom Brauen (born 18 April 1980 in Switzerland) is a Swiss actress, activist and writer.
- Birthplace: Bern, Switzerland
- Max Rudolf Frisch was a Swiss playwright and novelist. Frisch's works focused on problems of identity, individuality, responsibility, morality, and political commitment. His use of irony is a significant feature of his post-war publications. Frisch was one of the founders of Gruppe Olten. He was awarded the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 1986.
- Birthplace: Zürich, Switzerland
Moina Mathers
Dec. at 63 (1865-1928)Moina Mathers, born Mina Bergson (28 February 1865 – 25 July 1928), was an artist and occultist at the turn of the 20th century. She was the sister of French philosopher Henri Bergson, the first man of Jewish descent to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1927. She is, however, more known for her marriage to the English occultist, Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers, one of the founders of the organisation Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and, after his death in 1918, for being the head of a successor organisation, called the Rosicrucian Order of the Alpha et Omega.- Birthplace: Geneva, Switzerland
- Friedrich Dürrenmatt (German: [ˈfriːdrɪç ˈdʏrənˌmat]; 5 January 1921 – 14 December 1990) was a Swiss author and dramatist. He was a proponent of epic theatre whose plays reflected the recent experiences of World War II. The politically active author's work included avant-garde dramas, philosophical crime novels, and macabre satire. Dürrenmatt was a member of the Gruppe Olten, a group of left-wing Swiss writers who convened regularly at a restaurant in the town Olten.
- Birthplace: Konolfingen, Switzerland
- Robert Anthony Lutz (born February 12, 1932) is a Swiss American automotive executive. He served as a top leader of all of the United States Big Three (automobile manufacturers), having been in succession executive vice president (and board member) of Ford Motor Company, president and then vice chairman (and board member) of Chrysler Corporation, and vice chairman of General Motors.
- Birthplace: Zürich, Switzerland
- Paul Klee (German: [paʊ̯l ˈkleː]; 18 December 1879 – 29 June 1940) was a Swiss-born 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 theory, writing about it extensively; his lectures Writings on Form and Design Theory (Schriften zur Form und Gestaltungslehre), published in English as the Paul Klee Notebooks, are held to be as important for modern art as Leonardo da Vinci's A Treatise on Painting for the Renaissance. He and his colleague, Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky, both taught at the Bauhaus school of art, design and architecture. His works reflect his dry humor and his sometimes childlike perspective, his personal moods and beliefs, and his musicality.
- Birthplace: Münchenbuchsee, Switzerland
- Daniel Bernhardt is one of a very small club of European martial arts aficionados who have kicked and chopped their way into movies and TV. His path to get there was a unique one: originally trained as an architectural drafter, the Swiss national was discovered in his early 20s by a modeling agency, and his angular looks won him steady work in that profession. While still a student, Bernhardt opened a martial arts studio. The combat arts and modeling combined to get Bernhardt a job opposite Jean-Claude Van Damme in a TV ad, and soon after this he was tapped to replace the Belgian muscleman as the lead in the "Bloodsport" franchise. The newly anointed star played Alex Cardo in two installments of the martial artist vs. bad guys series, specifically "Bloodsport II: The Next Kumite" (1996) and the straight-to-video "Bloodsport III" (1997), while he played a different character, John Keller, in "Bloodsport 4: The Dark Kumite" (1999). He spent the rest of the 1990s taking similar roles in straight-to-video productions in the same genre, as well as a regular part in "Mortal Kombat: Conquest," the TV series based on the popular video game. The following decade, his skills and looks were put to good use in the second installment of the popular "Matrix" film franchise, "The Matrix Reloaded" (2003), in which he played one of the menacing, sunglasses-wearing FBI men, Agent Johnson. The film vaulted Bernhardt into more substantial roles than those early in his career.
- Birthplace: Worblaufen, Switzerland
- Alain de Botton, FRSL (; born 20 December 1969) is a Swiss-born British philosopher and author. His books discuss various contemporary subjects and themes, emphasizing philosophy's relevance to everyday life. He published Essays in Love (1993), which went on to sell two million copies. Other bestsellers include How Proust Can Change Your Life (1997), Status Anxiety (2004) and The Architecture of Happiness (2006). He co-founded The School of Life in 2008 and Living Architecture in 2009. In 2015, he was awarded "The Fellowship of Schopenhauer", an annual writers' award from the Melbourne Writers Festival, for this work.
- Birthplace: Zürich, Switzerland
- The Einstein family is the family of the renowned physicist Albert Einstein (1879–1955). Einstein's great-great-great-great-grandfather, Jakob Weil, was his oldest recorded relative, born in the late 17th century, and the family continues to this day. Albert Einstein's great-great-grandfather, Löb Moses Sontheimer (1745–1831), was also the grandfather of the prominent tenor Heinrich Sontheim (1820–1912) of Stuttgart.Albert's three children were from his relationship with his first wife, Mileva Marić, his daughter Lieserl being born a year before they married. Albert Einstein's second wife was Elsa Einstein, whose mother Fanny Koch was the sister of Albert's mother, and whose father, Rudolf Einstein, was the son of Raphael Einstein, a brother of Albert's paternal grandfather. Thus Albert and Elsa were first cousins through their mothers and second cousins through their fathers.
- Birthplace: Zürich, Switzerland
- Bruno Manser (25 August 1954 – 10 March 2005) was a Swiss environmental activist. From 1984 to 1990, he stayed with the Penan tribe in Sarawak, Malaysia, organising several blockades against timber companies. After he emerged from the forests in 1990, he engaged in public activism for rainforest preservation and the human rights of indigenous peoples, especially the Penan, which brought him into conflict with the Malaysian government. He also founded the Swiss non-governmental organization (NGO) Bruno Manser Fonds in 1991. He disappeared during his last journey to Sarawak in May 2000 and is presumed dead.
- Birthplace: Basel, Switzerland
- Arthur Cravan (born Fabian Avenarius Lloyd on 22 May 1887, Lausanne, Switzerland – disappeared 1918) was a Swiss writer, poet, artist and boxer. He was the second son of Otho Holland Lloyd and Hélène Clara St. Clair. His brother Otho Lloyd was a painter and photographer married to the Russian émigré artist Olga Sacharoff. His father's sister, Constance Mary Lloyd, was married to Irish poet Oscar Wilde. He changed his name to Cravan in 1912 in honour of his fiancée Renée Bouchet, who was born in the small village of Cravans in the department of Charente-Maritime in western France.Cravan was last seen at Salina Cruz, Mexico in 1918 and most likely drowned in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Mexico in November 1918.
- Birthplace: Lausanne, Switzerland
- Adolf Meyer (September 13, 1866 – March 17, 1950) was a psychiatrist who rose to prominence as the first psychiatrist-in-chief of the Johns Hopkins Hospital (1910-1941). He was president of the American Psychiatric Association in 1927–28 and was one of the most influential figures in psychiatry in the first half of the twentieth century. His focus on collecting detailed case histories on patients was one of the most prominent of his contributions. He oversaw the building and development of the Henry Phipps Psychiatric Clinic at Johns Hopkins Hospital, opened in April 1913, making sure it was suitable for scientific research, training and treatment. Meyer's work at the Phipps Clinic is arguably the most significant aspect of his career.Meyer's main theoretical contribution was his idea of ergasiology (a term he derived from the Greek for "working" and "doing") to describe a psychobiology. This brought together all the biological, social and psychological factors and symptoms pertaining to a patient. It considered mental illnesses to be a product of dysfunctional personality not a pathology of the brain. Believing that whole-life social and biological factors should be central to both diagnosis and treatment Meyer was one of the earliest psychologists to support occupational therapy as an important connection between the activities of an individual and their mental health, and incorporated community based activities and services to develop people's everyday living skills.
- Birthplace: Niederweningen, Zürich, Switzerland
- Abraham Alfonse Albert Gallatin, born de Gallatin (January 29, 1761 – August 12, 1849) was a Genevan-American politician, diplomat, ethnologist and linguist. He was an important leader of the Democratic-Republican Party, serving in various federal elective and appointed positions across four decades. He represented Pennsylvania in the Senate and the House of Representatives before becoming the longest-tenured United States Secretary of the Treasury and serving as a high-ranking diplomat. Born in Geneva in present-day Switzerland, Gallatin immigrated to the United States in the 1780s, settling in western Pennsylvania. He served as a delegate to the 1789 Pennsylvania constitutional convention and won election to the Pennsylvania General Assembly. An opponent of Alexander Hamilton's economic policies, Gallatin was elected to the United States Senate in 1793. However, he was removed from office on a party-line vote after a protest raised by his opponents suggested he did not meet the required nine years of citizenship. Returning to Pennsylvania, Gallatin helped calm many angry farmers during the Whiskey Rebellion. Gallatin returned to Congress in 1795 after winning election to the House of Representatives. He became the chief spokesman on financial matters for the Democratic-Republican Party, leading opposition to the Federalist economic program. Gallatin's mastery of public finance led to his choice as Secretary of the Treasury by President Thomas Jefferson, despite Federalist attacks that he was a "foreigner" with a French accent. Under Jefferson and James Madison, Gallatin served as secretary from 1801 until February 1814. Gallatin retained much of Hamilton's financial system, though he also presided over a reduction in the national debt prior to the War of 1812. Gallatin served on the American commission that agreed to the Treaty of Ghent, which ended the War of 1812. In the aftermath of the war, he helped found the Second Bank of the United States. Declining another term at the Treasury, Gallatin served as Ambassador to France from 1816 to 1823, struggling with scant success to improve relations with the government during the Bourbon Restoration. In the election of 1824, Gallatin was nominated for Vice President by the Democratic-Republican Congressional caucus. Gallatin never wanted the position and was humiliated when forced to withdraw from the race because he lacked popular support. In 1826 and 1827, he served as the ambassador to Britain and negotiated several agreements, such as a ten-year extension of the joint occupation of Oregon Country. After his tenure abroad, Gallatin settled in New York City, helping to found New York University. He also became president of the National Bank's branch in New York City. In 1842, Gallatin joined with John Russell Bartlett to found the American Ethnological Society. With his studies of the languages of Native Americans, he has been called "the father of American ethnology."
- Birthplace: Geneva, Switzerland
- Patrick Philippe Moraz (born 24 June 1948) is a Swiss musician, film composer and songwriter best known for his tenures as keyboardist in the rock bands Yes and The Moody Blues. Born into a musical family, Moraz learned music at a young age and studied at the Lausanne Conservatory. He began a music career in the 1960s as a jazz musician, performing with his quartet and quintet that performed across Europe and won several awards. In 1969, he formed the short lived progressive rock group Mainhorse and started work scoring films. He formed Refugee in 1974 and recorded one album before he joined Yes of that year. Moraz stayed with them until 1976; during this time he started a solo career with his first album, The Story of I (1976). Moraz was a member of The Moody Blues from 1978 to 1991. Since then, he has worked on various solo projects.
- Birthplace: Villars-Sainte-Croix, Switzerland
- Alain Tanner (born 6 December 1929) is a Swiss film director.
- Birthplace: Geneva, Switzerland
Jonas Hiller
Age: 42Jonas Hiller (born 12 February 1982) is a Swiss professional ice hockey goaltender currently playing for EHC Biel of the National League (NL). Hiller has previously played in the National Hockey League (NHL) for the Calgary Flames and the Anaheim Ducks, the latter with which he began his NHL career with in 2007 after going undrafted in any NHL Entry Draft.- Birthplace: Felben-Wellhausen, Switzerland
- Othmar Hermann Ammann was a Swiss-American structural engineer whose designs include the George Washington Bridge, Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, and Bayonne Bridge. He also directed the planning and construction of New York City's Lincoln Tunnel.
- Birthplace: Schaffhausen, Switzerland
- Alfred Denis Cortot (26 September 1877 – 15 June 1962) was a Franco-Swiss pianist, conductor, and teacher who was one of the most renowned classical musicians of the 20th century. He was especially valued for his poetic insight into Romantic piano works, particularly those of Chopin, Saint-Saëns and Schumann.
- Birthplace: Switzerland, Nyon
- Italian-German actor Mario Adorf has built an impressive career, that has stretched across six decades and two continents, resulting in numerous award nominations. Adorf's first on-screen appearance was in the 1954 World War I drama "08/15," which led to consistent work in motion pictures, and later, television. Some of Adorf's best-known roles include 1957's serial-killer thriller "The Devil Strikes at Night," 1972's crime drama "Caliber 9," and the lead role in 1979's controversial adaptation of Gunter Grass's fantasia "The Tin Drum," among others. Adorf is also known for supposedly turning down roles in movies that would go on to become classics: Francis Ford Coppola's mobster masterpiece "The Godfather," Billy Wilder's hectic Cold War satire "One, Two, Three," and Sam Peckinpah's violent revisionist western "The Wild Bunch." Celebrating his 80th birthday in 2010, Adorf continued to act well into the early 21st century, largely in movies made for German or Italian television.
- Birthplace: Zurich, Switzerland
- Charles Édouard Guillaume (15 February 1861, in Fleurier, Switzerland – 13 May 1938, in Sèvres, France) was a Swiss physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1920 in recognition of 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".
- Birthplace: Fleurier, Switzerland
- Sylvie Courvoisier (born November 30, 1968 in Lausanne, Switzerland) is a composer, pianist and improviser. Courvoisier was born and raised in Switzerland. In 1998, she moved to Brooklyn, New York, where she currently resides. Courvoisier has led several groups over the years and has recorded over 25 records as a leader or co-leader for different labels, notably ECM, Tzadik and Intakt Records and about 35 cds as a side person. She co-leads the Sylvie Courvoisier/Mark Feldman Quartet and leads her own Trio with Kenny Wollesen and Drew Gress. She leads her quintet, Lonelyville, and the Trio Abaton. She is a member of Mephista, an improvising trio with Ikue Mori and Susie Ibarra; Herb Robertson Quintet, with Tim Berne, Tom Rainey and Mark Dresser; Vincent Courtois Trio, along with Ellery Eskelin; and plays in different projects of John Zorn’. Since 1997, she also performs regularly in duo with violinist Mark Feldman (her husband). Since 2010, she has been working as a pianist and composer with the project of the flamenco dancer Israel Galvan "la Curva ». She received a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artist award (2018).
- Birthplace: Switzerland, Lausanne
- Edgar Henry Schein (born March 5, 1928), a former professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, has made a notable mark on the field of organizational development in many areas, including career development, group process consultation, and organizational culture. He is the son of former University of Chicago professor Marcel Schein.
- Birthplace: Zürich, Switzerland
- Rudolph Ganz (24 February 1877 Zurich – 2 August 1972 Chicago) was a Swiss-born American pianist, conductor, composer, and music educator.
- Birthplace: Zürich, Switzerland
- Dani Levy (born 17 November 1957) is a Swiss filmmaker, theatrical director, screenwriter and actor.
- Birthplace: Basel, Switzerland
- Julius Tafel (June 2, 1862 – September 2, 1918) was a Swiss chemist and electrochemist.
- Birthplace: Courrendlin, Switzerland
- Léa Pool C.M. (born 8 September 1950) is a Swiss-Canadian filmmaker who also teaches film at UQAM. She has directed several feature films, including Anne Trister (1986) and Set Me Free (Emporte-moi) (1999), both of which screened at the prestigious Berlin International Film Festival, where the latter won the Special Prize of the Ecumenical Jury.
- Birthplace: Soglio, Switzerland
- Jean-Louis Calandrini (August 30, 1703 – December 29, 1758) was a Genevan scientist. He was a professor of mathematics and philosophy. He was the author of some studies on the aurora borealis, comets, and the effects of lightning, as well as of an important but unpublished work on flat and spherical trigonometry. He also wrote a commentary on the Principia of Isaac Newton (published in Geneva, 1739–42), for which he wrote approximately one hundred footnotes. He was also known as a botanist. The genus Calandrinia was named after him.His father was a pastor, also named Jean-Louis, and his mother was Michée Du Pan. He was the grandnephew of Bénédict Calandrini (de) (fr). In 1729, he married Renée Lullin. At the Academy of Geneva, he obtained his thesis in physics (1722). In 1724, Calandrini was named mathematics professor at the same time as Gabriel Cramer, but he first undertook a three-year journey to France and England. He was appointed professor of philosophy from 1734 to 1750. He also played an active role on the political scene of Geneva.
- Birthplace: Geneva, Switzerland
- Bernard Tschumi is an architect, writer, and educator, commonly associated with deconstructivism. Son of the well-known architect Jean Tschumi, born of French and Swiss parentage, he 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.
- Birthplace: Lausanne, Switzerland
- François Pierre Ami Argand (5 July 1750 – 14 or 24 October 1803) was a Genevan physicist and chemist. He invented the Argand lamp, a great improvement on the traditional oil lamp.
- Birthplace: Geneva, Switzerland
- Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt (born Maria Mercedes Morgan; 23 August 1904 – 13 February 1965) was a Swiss-born American socialite best known as the mother of fashion designer and artist Gloria Vanderbilt and maternal grandmother of television journalist Anderson Cooper. She was a central figure in Vanderbilt vs. Whitney, one of the most sensational American custody trials in the 20th century. Her identical twin sister, Thelma, Viscountess Furness, was the mistress of the future Edward VIII.
- Birthplace: Lucerne, Switzerland
- Mirjam Ott (born 27 January 1972 in Bern, Switzerland) is a retired Swiss curler who lives in Laax, Switzerland. She is the 2012 World Curling Champion skip. She is the skip (captain) of the Swiss Olympic Curling Team. She has participated in several Olympic Games contests and has won numerous awards in many other curling events worldwide.
- Birthplace: Bern, Switzerland
- Carl Jacob Christoph Burckhardt (May 25, 1818 – August 8, 1897) was a Swiss historian of art and culture and an influential figure in the historiography of both fields. He is known as one of the major progenitors of cultural history. Sigfried Giedion described Burckhardt's achievement in the following terms: "The great discoverer of the age of the Renaissance, he first showed how a period should be treated in its entirety, with regard not only for its painting, sculpture and architecture, but for the social institutions of its daily life as well." Burckhardt's best known work is The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1860).
- Birthplace: Basel, Switzerland
- Daniel Robert Odier (born in 1945 in Geneva), also known by his pseudonym Delacorta, is a Swiss author and screenwriter. Praised by Anaïs Nin as "an outstanding writer and a dazzling poet," he is also a prolific writer on Eastern religious traditions, especially Tantra.
- Birthplace: Geneva, Switzerland
David Nydegger
Age: 44- Birthplace: Langenthal, Switzerland
- Johann Jakob Bachofen (22 December 1815 – 25 November 1887) was a Swiss antiquarian, jurist, philologist, anthropologist, and professor for Roman law at the University of Basel from 1841 to 1845. Bachofen is most often connected with his theories surrounding prehistoric matriarchy, or Das Mutterrecht, the title of his seminal 1861 book Mother Right: an investigation of the religious and juridical character of matriarchy in the Ancient World. Bachofen assembled documentation demonstrating that motherhood is the source of human society, religion, morality, and decorum. He postulated an archaic "mother-right" within the context of a primeval Matriarchal religion or Urreligion. Bachofen became an important precursor of 20th-century theories of matriarchy, such as the Old European culture postulated by Marija Gimbutas from the 1950s, and the field of feminist theology and "matriarchal studies" in 1970s feminism.
- Birthplace: Basel, Switzerland
Princess Maria Teresa of Bourbon-Two Sicilies
Dec. at 42 (1867-1909)Princess Maria Teresa Maddalena of Bourbon-Two Sicilies (Full Italian name: Principessa Maria Teresa Maddalena di Borbone delle Due Sicilie) (15 January 1867, Zürich, Switzerland – 1 March 1909, Cannes, France) was the only child of Prince Louis of Bourbon-Two Sicilies, Count of Trani (heir apparent of the defunct throne of the Two Sicilies) and his wife Duchess Mathilde Ludovika in Bavaria. Maria Teresa was a member of the House of Bourbon-Two Sicilies and became a member of the House of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen and titular Princess of Hohenzollern through her marriage to Prince Wilhelm of Hohenzollern (later Prince of Hohenzollern). She was called Mädi in the family and had a lifelong friendship with her cousin the Archduchess Marie Valerie of Austria.- Birthplace: Zürich, Switzerland
- Multitalented Stephanie Morgenstern began her career acting with a variety of films and TV series before broadening her scope to include writing and directing award-winning short films and co-creating the Canadian police drama "Flashpoint." She started acting as a teen while continuing her schooling. Fluent in both French and English, she took roles for stage and screen in both languages, frequently in supporting parts. In the mid '90s she began providing the voice of Sailor Venus in the English dubbed version of the popular anime series "Sailor Moon," and she has done similar work for other animated shows, as well as the "Dino Crisis" video games. Morgenstern appeared in two grim dramas with the odd connection of vehicles being driven into bodies of water: Atom Egoyan's highly regarded "The Sweet Hereafter" and Denis Villeneuve's "Maelström." Morgenstern earned Genie Awards (Canadian equivalent of Academy Awards) for her short films "Curtains" and "Remembrance." With her husband, Mark Ellis, she created the well-received dramatic series "Flashpoint," about a S.W.A.T.-style tactical team that handles extreme situations.
- Birthplace: Geneva, Switzerland
- David Botstein (born 8 September 1942) is an American biologist serving as the chief scientific officer of Calico. He served as the director of the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics at Princeton University from 2003–2013, where he remains an Anthony B. Evnin Professor of Genomics.
- Birthplace: Zürich, Switzerland
- Germain Henri Hess (Russian: Герман Иванович Гесс German Ivanovich Gess; 7 August 1802 – 30 November 1850) was a Swiss-Russian chemist and doctor who formulated Hess's law, an early principle of thermochemistry.
- Birthplace: Geneva, Switzerland
- Pierre Gilliard (16 May 1879 – 30 May 1962) was a Swiss academic and author, best known as the French language tutor to the five children of Emperor Nicholas II of Russia from 1905 to 1918. In 1921, after the Russian Revolution of 1917, he published a memoir, Thirteen Years at the Russian Court, about his time with the family. In his memoirs, Gilliard described Tsarina Alexandra's torment over her son's haemophilia and her faith in the ability of starets Grigori Rasputin to heal the boy.
- Birthplace: Switzerland
- Alain Gsponer is a director who is known for directing "Heidi," "Lila, Lila," and "The Little Ghost."
- Birthplace: Zürich, Switzerland
- Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh (Russian: Митрополит Антоний Сурожский, secular name Andrei Borisovich Bloom, Russian: Андрей Борисович Блум and commonly known as Anthony Bloom; 19 June 1914 – 4 August 2003) was best known as a writer and broadcaster on prayer and the Christian life. He was a monk and Metropolitan bishop of the Russian Orthodox Church. He was founder and for many years bishop - then archbishop, then metropolitan - of the Diocese of Sourozh, the Patriarchate of Moscow's diocese for Great Britain and Ireland (the name 'Sourozh' is that of the historical episcopal see in Sudak in the Crimea). As a bishop he became well known as a pastor, preacher, spiritual director and writer on prayer and the Christian life.
- Birthplace: Lausanne, Switzerland
- Alex Zülle (born 5 July 1968) is a Swiss former professional road bicycle racer. During the 1990s he was one of the best cyclists in the world, winning back-to-back in the 1996 and 1997 Vuelta a España, taking second place in the 1995 and the 1999 Tour de France. He was world time-trial champion in Lugano in 1996.
- Birthplace: Wil, Switzerland
- Alfonsina Storni (29 May 1892 – 25 October 1938) was an Argentine poet of the modernist period.
- Birthplace: Sala Capriasca, Switzerland
- Auguste Antoine Piccard (28 January 1884 – 24 March 1962) was a Swiss physicist, inventor and explorer, known for his record-breaking helium-filled balloon flights, with which he studied the Earth's upper atmosphere. Auguste 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. Piccard's twin brother Jean Felix Piccard is also a notable figure in the annals of science and exploration, as are a number of their relatives, including Jacques Piccard, Bertrand Piccard, Jeannette Piccard and Don Piccard.
- Birthplace: Basel, Switzerland
Henry Wirz
Dec. at 41 (1823-1865)Heinrich Hartmann Wirz, better known as Henry Wirz (November 25, 1823 – November 10, 1865), was a Swiss-American officer of the Confederate Army during the American Civil War. Wirz was the commandant of the stockade of Camp Sumter, a Confederate prisoner-of-war camp near Andersonville, Georgia, where terrible conditions led to a high mortality rate of Union detainees. After the war, Wirz was tried and executed for conspiracy and murder relating to his command of the camp, and was one of only two people convicted for war crimes during the American Civil War. Since his execution, Wirz has become a controversial figure due to debate about his guilt and reputation, including criticism over his personal responsibility for Camp Sumter's conditions and the quality of his post-war trial.- Birthplace: Zürich, Switzerland
- Jedrij Notz is an Olympic Alpine skier.
- Birthplace: Lausanne, Switzerland
Toni Livers
Age: 41Toni Livers (born 2 June 1983 in Trun) is a Swiss cross country skier who has competed since 2000. His best individual finish at the FIS Nordic World Ski Championships was ninth in the 15 km + 15 km double pursuit at Sapporo in 2007. Livers' best finish at the Winter Olympics was tenth in the 4 x 10 km relay at Vancouver in 2010. His only World Cup victory occurred in the 15 km event in Davos, Switzerland on 3 February 2007. He finished third at the 9 km Final CLimb event at the 2014-15 Tour de Ski. Livers also has seven individual victories in lesser events from 2002 to 2005.- Birthplace: Trun, Switzerland
Paul Guldin
Dec. at 66 (1577-1643)Paul Guldin (original name Habakkuk Guldin; 12 June 1577 (Mels) – 3 November 1643 (Graz)) was a Swiss Jesuit mathematician and astronomer. He discovered the Guldinus theorem to determine the surface and the volume of a solid of revolution. (This theorem is also known as the Pappus–Guldinus theorem and Pappus's centroid theorem, attributed to Pappus of Alexandria.) Guldin was noted for his association with the German mathematician and astronomer Johannes Kepler. Guldin composed a critique of Cavalieri's method of Indivisibles.Although of Jewish descent, his parents were Protestants and they brought Guldin up in that faith. He was a professor of mathematics in Graz and Vienna. In Paolo Casati's astronomical work Terra machinis mota (1658), Casati imagines a dialogue among Guldin, Galileo, and Marin Mersenne on various intellectual problems of cosmology, geography, astronomy and geodesy.- Birthplace: St. Gallen, Switzerland
- Philip "Phil" Peter Dalhausser (born January 26, 1980) is an American professional beach volleyball player, playing as a blocker. He and his former playing partner, Todd Rogers, were the 2007 AVP Tour and FIVB world champions. Dalhausser and Rogers dominated both the domestic US tour and now the FIVB international tour winning #1 team honors on both tours in 2010. Dalhausser and Rogers were Olympic gold medalists at the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympic Games. He also won gold in Rio for beach volleyball with a fellow FSU volleyball coach and competitive player.
- Birthplace: Baden, Switzerland
- Esther Dyson (born 14 July 1951) is a Swiss-born American journalist, author, businesswoman, investor, commentator and philanthropist. She is a leading angel investor focused on health care, open government, digital technology, biotechnology, and outer space. Dyson's career focusses on health and continues to invest in health and technology startups.
- Birthplace: Zürich, Switzerland
Gaspard Bauhin
Dec. at 64 (1560-1624)Gaspard Bauhin or Caspar Bauhin (Latin: Casparus Bauhinus; 17 January 1560 – 5 December 1624), was a Swiss botanist whose Phytopinax (1596) described thousands of plants and classified them in a manner that draws comparisons to the later binomial nomenclature of Linnaeus. He was a disciple of the famous Italian physician Girolamo Mercuriale and he also worked on human anatomical nomenclature. Linnaeus honored the Bauhin brothers Gaspard and Jean in the genus name Bauhinia.- Birthplace: Basel, Switzerland
- Émil August Goeldi (var. Göldi, var. Emílio Augusto Goeldi) (28 August 1859 – 5 July 1917 in Bern), was a Swiss-Brazilian naturalist and zoologist. He was the father of Oswaldo Goeldi, a noted Brazilian engraver and illustrator.
- Birthplace: St. Gallen, Switzerland
Walter Kistler
Age: 107Walter P. Kistler (1918 – November 2, 2015) was a physicist, inventor, and philanthropist, born in Biel, Switzerland. Kistler is a life member of the Swiss Physical Society and a member of AIAA and ISA, which presented him the Life Achievement Award in 2000. He held patents on more than 50 inventions in the scientific and industrial instrumentation fields, and had published a number of papers in scientific and trade journals.- Birthplace: Biel/Bienne, Switzerland
- Boris Lehman, (born 3 March 1944, Lausanne), is a Belgian author-filmmaker of experimental cinema. Lehman initially studied piano, but in the early 1960s became interested in photography and cinema. In 1966, after graduating in Film Studies from the Institut National Supérieur des Arts du spectacle, Brussels, he became a film enthusiast and critic, contributing reviews to weekly publications and magazines. He began making films between 1965 and 1983 when working for Club Antonin Artaud, a readjustment day centre for the mentally ill, using cinema as a therapeutic tool with patients. He later founded the film-based organisations Cinélibre, Cinédit, and AJC, the young filmmakers' workshop. He has assisted Henri Storck with the films Secret Forest of Africa and Fêtes de Belgique, and Chantal Akerman with Jeanne Dielman. He has also collaborated with filmmakers Patrick Van Antwerpen, Jean-Marie Buchet and Gérard Courant. As an actor, Lehman has played roles in Brussels-transit (dir. Samy Szlingerbaum 1980), Canal K (dir. Maurice Rabinowicz 1970), and Les Filles en Orange (dir. Yaël André 2003). Initially working with amateurs, he has produced 400 films in Super 8, 16 mm or video, as either shorts, features, documentaries, journals or autobiographies, and has shot 300,000 photographs. Lehman's cinematic work has little public recognition but has been shown at festivals and cine clubs.
- Birthplace: Switzerland, Lausanne
Grock
Dec. at 79 (1880-1959)Grock (January 10, 1880 – July 14, 1959), born Charles Adrien Wettach, was a Swiss clown, composer and musician. Called "the king of clowns" and "the greatest of Europe's clowns", Grock was once the most highly paid entertainer in the world.- Birthplace: Loveresse, Switzerland
- Johann Bernoulli (also known as Jean or John; 6 August [O.S. 27 July] 1667 – 1 January 1748) was a Swiss mathematician and was one of the many prominent mathematicians in the Bernoulli family. He is known for his contributions to infinitesimal calculus and educating Leonhard Euler in the pupil's youth.
- Birthplace: Basel, Switzerland
Willi Kunz
Age: 82- Birthplace: Switzerland
- Yvonne Leuthold is a British handball player. She plays for the British national team, and competed at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London.
- Birthplace: Bern, Switzerland
George de Mestral
Dec. at 82 (1907-1990)George de Mestral (June 19, 1907 – February 8, 1990) was a Swiss electrical engineer who invented the hook and loop fastener which he named Velcro.- Birthplace: Nyon, Switzerland
- Martin Walz is a film director and producer.
- Birthplace: Zürich, Switzerland
- Carl Alfred Meier was a Swiss psychiatrist, Jungian psychologist, scholar, and first president of the C. G. Jung Institute in Zürich. As a successor to Carl Jung, he held the Chair of Honorary Professor of Psychology at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in 1949. Later, co-founded the Clinic and Research Center for Jungian Psychology in Zürichberg. Professor Meier was born in Schaffhausen, Switzerland in 1905. He enrolled at the University of Zürich in 1924. In the winter semester of 1927, Meier traveled to Paris to study at the Medical Faculty of the University of Paris. Later, in 1928, he traveled to Vienna to study at the Steinhof, and to attend the lectures of Julius Wagner-Jauregg. A colleague at Steinhof invited him to attend a series of Wednesday seminars delivered by Sigmund Freud. In 1931, he began his study of psychiatry under Hans-Wolfgang Maier at Burghölzli.
- Birthplace: Schaffhausen, Switzerland
John Brack
Dec. at 78 (1920-1999)John Brack (10 May 1920 – 11 February 1999) was an Australian painter, and a member of the Antipodeans group. According to one critic, Brack's early works captured the idiosyncrasies of their time "more powerfully and succinctly than any Australian artist before or since. Brack forged the iconography of a decade on canvas as sharply as Barry Humphries did on stage."- Birthplace: Zürich, Switzerland
- Jacob Bernoulli (also known as James or Jacques; 6 January 1655 [O.S. 27 December 1654] – 16 August 1705) was one of the many prominent mathematicians in the Bernoulli family. He was an early proponent of Leibnizian calculus and sided with Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz during the Leibniz–Newton calculus controversy. He is known for his numerous contributions to calculus, and along with his brother Johann, was one of the founders of the calculus of variations. He also discovered the fundamental mathematical constant e. However, his most important contribution was in the field of probability, where he derived the first version of the law of large numbers in his work Ars Conjectandi.
- Birthplace: Basel, Switzerland
- Ferdinand Hurter (15 March 1844 – 12 March 1898) was a Swiss industrial chemist who settled in England. He also carried out research into photography.
- Birthplace: Schaffhausen, Switzerland
- Florian Cajori (February 28, 1859 – August 14 or 15, 1930) was a Swiss-American historian of mathematics.
- Birthplace: Canton of Graubünden, Switzerland
Joseph Deiss
Age: 79Joseph Deiss (born 18 January 1946) is an economist, Swiss politician and a member of the Christian Democratic People's Party (CVP/PDC). From 1999 to 2006, he was a member of the Swiss Federal Council, heading first the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (1999–2002) and then the Federal Department of Economic Affairs (2003–2006). He was elected President of the United Nations General Assembly for its 65th session in 2010.- Birthplace: Fribourg, Switzerland
- Anais Morand (born 10 March 1993 in Vouvry, Switzerland) is a Swiss pair skater and Red Bull Crashed Ice competitor. She is the 2011–2012 Swiss national champion with Timothy Leemann and the 2008–2010 Swiss champion with Antoine Dorsaz. She is the 2018 Crans-Montana Riders Cup Ice Cross Champion.
- Birthplace: Vouvry, Switzerland
- Romain Grosjean (French pronunciation: [ʁɔmɛ̃ ɡʁoʒɑ̃]; born 17 April 1986) is a racing driver, currently racing for the Haas F1 Team. He races under the French flag in Formula One although he was born in Geneva and holds dual French-Swiss nationality. He dominated the 2005 French Formula Renault championship at his first attempt and joined the Renault young driver programme. He was the 2007 Formula 3 Euro Series drivers' champion. In 2008 he became the inaugural GP2 Asia Series champion and came 4th in his first year in GP2. In 2009 he made his Formula One debut for Renault at the European Grand Prix and came 4th again in GP2 despite missing the final eight races. After being dropped by Renault he returned to junior formulae, winning the 2010 Auto GP championship at the first attempt and winning the 2011 GP2 Asia Series and GP2 Series becoming the first – and as of 2018, only – two-time GP2 Asia champion and the only driver to hold both the GP2 Asia series and main GP2 series titles simultaneously. Due to the Asia and Main GP2 series being combined, it is likely that this will remain true for the foreseeable future. In 2012, Grosjean returned to Formula One with the Lotus F1 Team, alongside Kimi Räikkönen. He took his first Formula One podium at the 2012 Bahrain Grand Prix and took his first fastest lap in the 2012 Spanish Grand Prix. He became the first driver since 1994 to receive a race ban after causing a multi-car pile up, at the 2012 Belgian Grand Prix. In 2013 he remained with Lotus, taking six podiums. He drove for Lotus again alongside Venezuelan Pastor Maldonado in the 2014 and 2015 seasons. He moved to Haas in 2016.
- Birthplace: Geneva, Switzerland
- For the wave phenomena scientist, see Hans Jenny (cymatics).Hans Jenny (7 February 1899 – 9 January 1992) was a soil scientist and expert on pedology (the study of soil in its natural environment), particularly the processes of soil formation. He served as 1949 President of the Soil Science Society of America.
- Birthplace: Basel, Switzerland
- Emmanuelle Gagliardi (born 9 July 1976) is a retired professional Swiss tennis player. She was coached by Marco Tarelli and her preferred surface was hardcourt. Gagliardi never won a WTA Tour singles title, but reached the semifinals of the 2002 Indian Wells Masters, losing to eventual champion Daniela Hantuchová in three sets. She was a member of the Switzerland Fed Cup team that reached the final in 1998. She was also a member of the Swiss team for the 2008 Summer Olympics and played doubles with Patty Schnyder, reaching the second round. She has not been active on the WTA Tour ever since.In doubles, Gagliardi reached the semifinals of the 2003 Australian Open with Petra Mandula and won the 2004 China Open, a Premier tournament, with Dinara Safina.
- Birthplace: Geneva, Switzerland
Ruth Metzler
Age: 60Ruth Metzler-Arnold (born 23 May 1964) is a Swiss politician and former member of the Swiss Federal Council (1999–2003). She was elected to the Swiss Federal Council on 11 March 1999, as a member of the Christian Democratic People's Party from the Canton of Appenzell Innerrhoden. During her time in office she headed the Federal Department of Justice and Police. She won 14 referendums during her time in office. On 10 December 2003, she became the third member of the council not to be reelected in the history of the Swiss Federal State. In the 2003 Federal Assembly elections, her party lost many voters and the Swiss People's Party became the largest party of Switzerland. The Swiss People's party then requested another seat in the Federal Council. In the elections for the Federal Council on 10 December, the Federal Assembly did not re-elect Ruth Metzler and elected Christoph Blocher instead, by 121 votes to 116 on the third round of voting. She challenged her CVP colleague Joseph Deiss for his seat, but lost by 138 to 96. Metzler kept her seat until the end of the year and Christoph Blocher succeeded her on 1 January 2004. She published the memories of those years under the title "Grissini & Alpenbitter", 2004, ISBN 3-85882-388-0. She taught between February 2004 and July 2004 at the University of St. Gallen a class called "Gestaltungsmöglichkeiten in der Politik" which can be translated as "scope for design in politics". Since April 2005 she has been working for the Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis.- Birthplace: Sursee, Switzerland
Marc Birkigt
Dec. at 75 (1878-1953)Marc Birkigt (8 March 1878, Geneva – 15 March 1953, Versoix) was a Swiss engineer who moved to Barcelona, Spain when he was hired as an engineer by Emilio de la Cuadra, founder of Hispano-Suiza automobiles. He created the Dewoitine company along with Émile Dewoitine. Birkigt was nominated for the Car Engineer of the Century prize for the luxurious Hispano-Suiza H6 car in the 1920s. He also won fame for the aircraft engines and guns he designed at Hispano-Suiza as chief engineer, the former including the liquid-cooled V8 engine that powered the famous French SPAD VII and SPAD XIII World War I fighters, and the British Sopwith Dolphin and S.E. 5a, whilst in the field of ordnance he created the Hispano-Suiza HS.404 20mm autocannon, which was of great importance in WW II as the main fighter gun of the RAF from 1941 onwards.- Birthplace: Geneva, Switzerland
- Michael Albasini (born 20 December 1980) is a Swiss professional road bicycle racer, who currently rides for UCI WorldTeam Mitchelton–Scott.
- Birthplace: Mendrisio, Switzerland
Jakob Amsler-Laffon
Dec. at 88 (1823-1912)Jakob Amsler-Laffon (11 November 1823 – 3 January 1912) was a mathematician, physicist, engineer and the founder of his own factory. Amsler was born on the Stalden near the village of Schinznach in the district of Brugg, canton Aargau, and died in Schaffhausen, Switzerland. His father was Jakob Amsler-Amsler (1779–1869). On graduating from school in 1843, he went to the University of Jena and then to the University of Königsberg to study theology. At Königsberg he changed courses, deciding to focus on mathematics and physics after meeting the inspiring Franz Neumann. Among Amsler's fellow students at Königsberg were Gustav Robert Kirchhoff and Siegfried Heinrich Aronhold. Amsler gained his doctorate from Königsberg in 1848 and returned to Switzerland in the same year. In 1851 he became a Privatdozent at the University of Zürich and later in that year accepted a position as a mathematics teacher at the Gymnasium in Schaffhausen. In 1854 Amsler married Elise Laffon (1830–1899). The couple had two daughters and three sons. Their oldest son Alfred Amsler (1857–1940) was a mathematician and engineer in his own right and succeeded to his father as the owner and director of the factory. From about 1885 until about 1905, father and son closely cooperated on many projects in their business; many of their ideas, inventions and constructions of the time are difficult to attribute to either one of them. Jakob Amsler-Laffon invented the polar planimeter in 1854.- Birthplace: Unterbözberg, Switzerland
- Jean Charles Léonard de Sismondi (also known as Jean Charles Leonard Simonde de Sismondi) (French: [ʒɑ̃ ʃaʁl leɔnaʁ də sismɔ̃di]; 9 May 1773 – 25 June 1842), whose real name was Simonde, was a historian and political economist, who is best known for his works on French and Italian history, and his economic ideas. His Nouveaux principes d'économie politique, ou de la richesse dans ses rapports avec la population (1819) represents the first liberal critique of laissez-faire economics. He was one of the pioneering advocates of unemployment insurance, sickness benefits, a progressive tax, regulation of working hours, and a pension scheme. He was also the first to coin the term proletariat to refer to the working class created under capitalism, and his discussion of mieux value anticipates the Marxist concept of surplus value. According to Gareth Stedman Jones, "much of what Sismondi wrote became part of the standard repertoire of socialist criticism of modern industry."
- Birthplace: Geneva, Switzerland
- Robert Pinget (Geneva, July 19, 1919 – August 25, 1997, Tours) was an avant-garde French writer, born in Switzerland, who wrote several novels and other prose pieces that drew comparison to Beckett and other major Modernist writers. He was also associated with the nouveau roman movement.
- Birthplace: Geneva, Switzerland
- Tobias Grünenfelder (born 27 November 1977 in Elm) is a Swiss alpine skier. He is the 2005, 2006, 2009 and 2010 Swiss champion in Super-G. He also won national Downhill gold in 2007 and 2009. He participated at the World Championships in Vail 1999, St. Moritz 2003 and Bormio 2005 and competed at the 2002, 2006 and 2010 Winter Olympics. He earned his maiden World Cup victory during a Super-G event in Lake Louise, during the 2011, edging the reigning World Cup champion and teammate Carlo Janka. His brother Jürg Grünenfelder is an alpine skier as well.
- Birthplace: Elm, Switzerland
- Leonardo Conti, MD (German pronunciation: [ˈleːonaɐ̯doː ˈkɔntiː]; 24 August 1900 in Lugano – 6 October 1945 in Nuremberg) was the Reich Health Leader (Reichsgesundheitsführer) in Nazi Germany. The killing of a large number of Germans who were of "unsound mind" is attributed to his leadership.
- Birthplace: Lugano, Switzerland
- Leonie Krail (born 9 September 1986) is a Swiss former competitive ice dancer. With Oscar Peter, she is a three-time Swiss national champion (2006, 2008, 2009) and competed in the final segment at four ISU Championships – 2006 Europeans, 2008 Europeans, 2009 Europeans, and 2008 Worlds. Earlier in her career, Krail competed with Marc Fausch. After Fausch quit, she was without a partner for six months and then teamed up with Oscar Peter, in 2003. Krail/Peter were coached by Natalia Linichuk and Gennadi Karponosov in Aston, Pennsylvania.
- Birthplace: Wynigen, Switzerland
- Christian Kracht (German pronunciation: [ˈkraxt]; born 29 December 1966) is a Swiss novelist and journalist.
- Birthplace: Saanen, Switzerland
- Johannes Friedrich Miescher (13 August 1844 – 26 August 1895) was a Swiss physician and biologist. He was the first researcher to isolate nucleic acid.
- Birthplace: Basel, Switzerland
Dominik Scherrer
Age: 58Dominik Scherrer is a film score composer.- Birthplace: Zürich, Switzerland
- Werner Kaegi is a Swiss electronic music composer, musicologist and educator. During the 1960s, he promoted electronic music in his home country. In the 1970s, as a composer and researcher at Utrecht's Institute of Sonology, The Netherlands, he developed pioneering programs in the field of computer-generated music.
- Birthplace: Uznach, Switzerland
- Nuria Fernández Domínguez (born 16 August 1976 in Luzern, Switzerland) is a Spanish middle distance runner. She specialises in the 1500 metres and is the Spanish record holder in the mile run and the 1500 m indoors.
- Birthplace: Lucerne, Switzerland
- Carl Friedrich Georg Spitteler (24 April 1845 – 29 December 1924) was a Swiss poet who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1919 "in special appreciation of his epic, Olympian Spring". His work includes both pessimistic and heroic poems.
- Birthplace: Liestal, Switzerland
Steve Guerdat
Age: 42Steve Guerdat (born 10 June 1982 in Bassecourt, Canton of Jura) is a Swiss Olympic-level equestrian who competes in the sport of show jumping. He is the 2012 Olympic Champion in individual jumping. He also won the bronze medal at the 2008 Summer Olympics in team jumping following the disqualification of Norwegian rider Tony André Hansen.In July 2012, Guerdat was ranked third in the world.He is a two-time World Cup champion, winning in 2015 and 2016.- Birthplace: Bassecourt, Switzerland
