Science and technology in Switzerland play an important role in the Swiss economy, which has very few natural resources that are available in the country. The Swiss National Science Foundation, mandated by the Federal government, is the most important institute for promoting scientific research.
The raw output of scientific research from Switzerland consistently ranks within the top 20.[2] Switzerland was ranked 1st in the Global Innovation Index in 2024, the same position as 2013, 2021, 2020 and 2019[3][4][5]
Oerlikon Space supplies the payload fairings for the Ariane 5launcher.
Switzerland Space Agency, the Swiss Space Office, has been involved in various space technologies and programs. In addition it was one of the 10 founders of the European Space Agency in 1975 and is the seventh largest contributor to the ESA budget. In the private sector, several companies are implicated in the space industry such as RUAG Space (payload fairings) or Maxon Motors (mars rovers).
Leonhard Euler is considered to be the preeminent mathematician of the 18th century and one of the greatest of all time. A statement attributed to Pierre-Simon Laplace expresses Euler's influence on mathematics: "Read Euler, read Euler, he is the master of us all."[10] Euler made important discoveries in fields as diverse as calculus and graph theory. He also introduced much of the modern mathematical terminology and notation, particularly for mathematical analysis, such as the notion of a mathematical function.
Albert Einstein (naturalized in 1901) [11] was one of the greatest physicists of all time. He is known for his theory of relativity and specifically mass–energy equivalence, expressed by the equation E=mc2 and also contributed in many other areas (cosmology, solid state physics). Einstein was named "Person of the Century" by Time.
According to one EPFL source, globally, 4 out of the 20 top labs in the field of AI are located in Switzerland.[12]
Biological and earth sciences
Friedrich Miescher was a Swiss physician who was the first researcher to isolate and characterize Nucleic acid (DNA). Today, a research institute in Basel (the Friedrich Miescher Institute, FMI) is named after him.[13]Emil Theodor Kocher (Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1909) was known for his work in the physiology, pathology and surgery of the thyroid. The neurologist Walter Rudolf Hess (Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1949) mapped the areas of the brain that were responsible for the control of several vital bodily functions. The biochemist Werner Arber (Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1978) is known for his discovery of restriction endonucleases which are essential for all modern biotechnology. The Swiss born Edmond H. Fischer (Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1992) discovered how reversible phosphorylation works as a switch to activate proteins. Rolf M. Zinkernagel (Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1996) is famous for his work on the immune system.
Psychology
Carl Jung (1875–1961) was a Swisspsychiatrist and the founder of Analytical Psychology. Jung is considered the first modern psychiatrist to view the human psyche as "by nature religious" and make it the focus of exploration.
↑ Dunham, William (1999). Euler: The Master of Us All. The Mathematical Association of America. xiii. "Lisez Euler, lisez Euler, c'est notre maître à tous."
Daniel Bernoulli was a Swiss mathematician and physicist and was one of the many prominent mathematicians in the Bernoulli family from Basel. He is particularly remembered for his applications of mathematics to mechanics, especially fluid mechanics, and for his pioneering work in probability and statistics. His name is commemorated in the Bernoulli's principle, a particular example of the conservation of energy, which describes the mathematics of the mechanism underlying the operation of two important technologies of the 20th century: the carburetor and the aeroplane wing.
The École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) is a public research university in Lausanne, Switzerland. Founded in 1969 with the mission to "train talented engineers in Switzerland", it is inspired by the École Centrale Paris.
ETH Zurich is a public research university in Zurich, Switzerland. Founded in 1854 with the stated mission to educate engineers and scientists, the university focuses primarily on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
Johann Bernoulli 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.
Switzerland lies at the crossroads of several major European cultures. Three of the continent's major languages, German, French and Italian, are national languages of Switzerland, along with Romansh, spoken by a small minority. Therefore, Swiss culture is characterized by diversity, which is reflected in a wide range of traditional customs. The 26 cantons also account for the large cultural diversity.
The University of Basel is a public research university in Basel, Switzerland. Founded on 4 April 1460, it is Switzerland's oldest university and among the world's oldest surviving universities. The university is traditionally counted among the leading institutions of higher learning in the country.
Walter Rudolf Hess was a Swiss physiologist who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1949 for mapping the areas of the brain involved in the control of internal organs. He shared the prize with Egas Moniz.
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.
The SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics is an academic not-for-profit foundation which federates bioinformatics activities throughout Switzerland.
The University of Bern is a public research university in the Swiss capital of Bern. It was founded in 1834. It is regulated and financed by the Canton of Bern. It is a comprehensive university offering a broad choice of courses and programs in eight faculties and some 150 institutes. With around 19,000 students, the University of Bern is the third largest university in Switzerland.
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.
The Swiss Electromagnetics Research and Engineering Centre (SEREC) is the sole organization for handling electromagnetic research and concerns in Switzerland.
The Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology is a Swiss research institution for application-oriented materials science and technology. It has three locations – Dübendorf, St. Gallen and Thun. As part of the ETH Domain, it is assigned to the Federal Department of Economic Affairs, Education and Research (EAER). For more than 100 years since its foundation in 1880, Empa has been a material testing institute. Since the late 1980s, it has increasingly transformed into an interdisciplinary research institute for materials and technologies.
The Swiss Finance Institute (SFI) is a national center for research, doctoral training, knowledge exchange, and continuing education in the fields of banking and finance. Created in 2006 as a public–private partnership, SFI is a common initiative of the Swiss finance industry, leading Swiss universities, and the Swiss Confederation.
Life Sciences Switzerland (LS2) is the Swiss federation of scientific societies for life sciences. It was formerly known as the Union of the Swiss Societies for Experimental Biology (USGEB). It was founded in 1969, with the founding meeting taking place in Bern, Switzerland. At the founding, four societies, Swiss Society for Physiology, Swiss Society for Biochemistry, Swiss Society for Pharmacology and Swiss Society for Cell & Molecular Biology comprised the original societies.
Silvia Arber is a Swiss neurobiologist. She teaches and researches at both the Biozentrum of the University of Basel and the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research in Basel Switzerland.
The Cloëtta Prize is a Swiss distinction to honour personalities who have distinguished themselves in biomedical research.
Susan M. Gasser is a Swiss molecular biologist. From 2004 to 2019 she was the director of the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research in Basel, Switzerland, where she also led a research group from 2004 until 2021. She was in parallel professor of molecular biology at the University of Basel until April 2021. Since January 2021, Susan Gasser is director of the ISREC Foundation, which supports translational cancer research. She is also professor invité at the University of Lausanne in the department of fundamental microbiology. She is an expert in quantitative biology and studies epigenetic inheritance and genome stability. Recipient of multiple swiss and European awards, she was named member of the US Academy of Sciences in 2022.
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