Solar Impulse SI2 pilote Bertrand Piccard Payerne November 2014

Science and technology in Switzerland play an important role in the Swiss economy, which has very few

natural resources Natural resources are resources that are drawn from nature and used with few modifications. This includes the sources of valued characteristics such as commercial and industrial use, aesthetic value, scientific interest and cultural value. ...

that are available in the country. The

Swiss National Science Foundation The Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF, German: ''Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung'', SNF; French: ''Fonds national suisse de la recherche scientifique'', FNS; Italian: ''Fondo nazionale svizzero ...

, 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. Switzerland was ranked 1st in the

Global Innovation Index The Global Innovation Index is an annual ranking of countries by their capacity for, and success in, innovation, published by the World Intellectual Property Organization. It was started in 2007 by INSEAD and ''World Business'', a British ma ...

in 2021

Institutions

Universities

The first university, the

University of Basel The University of Basel (Latin: ''Universitas Basiliensis'', German: ''Universität Basel'') is a university in Basel, Switzerland. Founded on 4 April 1460, it is Switzerland's oldest university and among the world's oldest surviving universit ...

, was founded in 1460 and today the country has twelve universities. *

Basel , french: link=no, Bâlois(e), it, Basilese , neighboring_municipalities= Allschwil (BL), Hégenheim (FR-68), Binningen (BL), Birsfelden (BL), Bottmingen (BL), Huningue (FR-68), Münchenstein (BL), Muttenz (BL), Reinach (BL), Riehen (BS ...

University of Bern The University of Bern (german: Universität Bern, french: Université de Berne, la, Universitas Bernensis) is a university in the Swiss capital of Bern and was founded in 1834. It is regulated and financed by the Canton of Bern. It is a compreh ...

, Bern *

University of Fribourg The University of Fribourg (french: Université de Fribourg; german: Universität Freiburg) is a public university located in Fribourg, Switzerland. The roots of the university can be traced back to 1580, when the notable Jesuit Peter Canisi ...

Fribourg , neighboring_municipalities= Düdingen, Givisiez, Granges-Paccot, Marly, Pierrafortscha, Sankt Ursen, Tafers, Villars-sur-Glâne , twintowns = Rueil-Malmaison (France) , website = www.ville-fribourg.ch , Location of , Location of () () ...

University of Geneva The University of Geneva (French: ''Université de Genève'') is a public research university located in Geneva, Switzerland. It was founded in 1559 by John Calvin as a theological seminary. It remained focused on theology until the 17th centur ...

Geneva , neighboring_municipalities= Carouge, Chêne-Bougeries, Cologny, Lancy, Grand-Saconnex, Pregny-Chambésy, Vernier, Veyrier , website = https://www.geneve.ch/ Geneva ( ; french: Genève ) frp, Genèva ; german: link=no, Genf ; it, Ginevr ...

University of Neuchâtel The University of Neuchâtel (UniNE) is a French-speaking university based in Neuchâtel, Switzerland. The university has four faculties (schools) and more than a dozen institutes, including arts and human sciences, natural sciences, law and eco ...

, Neuchâtel * University of Lausanne (UNIL),

Lausanne , neighboring_municipalities= Bottens, Bretigny-sur-Morrens, Chavannes-près-Renens, Cheseaux-sur-Lausanne, Crissier, Cugy, Écublens, Épalinges, Évian-les-Bains (FR-74), Froideville, Jouxtens-Mézery, Le Mont-sur-Lausanne, Lugrin (FR ...

University of Lucerne The University of Lucerne (UNILU; German: ''Universität Luzern'') is a public university with a campus in Lucerne, Switzerland. 1,460 undergraduates and 1,258 postgraduate students attend the university, which makes it Switzerland's smallest un ...

Lucerne Lucerne ( , ; High Alemannic German, High Alemannic: ''Lozärn'') or Luzern ()Other languages: gsw, Lozärn, label=Lucerne German; it, Lucerna ; rm, Lucerna . is a city in central Switzerland, in the Languages of Switzerland, German-speaking po ...

University of Lugano A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, t ...

Lugano Lugano (, , ; lmo, label=Ticinese dialect, Ticinese, Lugan ) is a city and municipality in Switzerland, part of the Lugano District in the canton of Ticino. It is the largest city of both Ticino and the Italian-speaking southern Switzerland. Luga ...

University of St. Gallen A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, t ...

(HSG),

St. Gallen , neighboring_municipalities = Eggersriet, Gaiserwald, Gossau, Herisau (AR), Mörschwil, Speicher (AR), Stein (AR), Teufen (AR), Untereggen, Wittenbach , twintowns = Liberec (Czech Republic) , website = ...

University of Zurich The University of Zürich (UZH, german: Universität Zürich) is a public research university located in the city of Zürich, Switzerland. It is the largest university in Switzerland, with its 28,000 enrolled students. It was founded in 1833 f ...

Zürich , neighboring_municipalities = Adliswil, Dübendorf, Fällanden, Kilchberg, Maur, Oberengstringen, Opfikon, Regensdorf, Rümlang, Schlieren, Stallikon, Uitikon, Urdorf, Wallisellen, Zollikon , twintowns = Kunming, San Francisco Zürich ...

* Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zurich),

* Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL),

Research institutes

* Agroscope Changins-Wädenswil (ACW) * Agroscope Liebefeld-Posieux (ALP) * Agroscope Reckenholz-Tänikon (ART) * European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) * Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS),

Manno Manno is a municipality in the district of Lugano in the canton of Ticino in Switzerland. History Manno is first mentioned in 1184. In 1298, the Bishop of Como owned estates in the village. In 1335, the village divided into two sections, Man ...

* Swiss Center for Electronics and Microtechnology (CSEM) * Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) **

Swiss Light Source The Swiss Light Source (SLS) is a synchrotron located at the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) in Switzerland for producing electromagnetic radiation of high brightness. Planning started in 1991, the project was approved in 1997, and first light from ...

* Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (EMPA) * Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (EAWAG) * Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL)
Swiss Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (SFIVET)
* Swiss Graduate School of Public Administration (IDHEAP) * Idiap Research Institute * Dalle Molle Institute for Artificial Intelligence Research (IDSIA) * Swiss Institute of Comparative Law
Kurt Bösch University Institute (IUKB)

Federal Institute of Metrology (METAS)
* Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology (MeteoSwiss) * Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics (SIB) * Swiss Finance Institute *

International Institute for Management Development (IMD) International Institute for Management Development (IMD) is a private business school in Lausanne, Switzerland specializes in executive education offering open enrollment programs for senior executives, as well as longer-term educational engageme ...

* Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (IHEID) * Sempach Bird Observatory * Swiss Institute of Allergy and Asthma Research
Swiss Nanoscience Institute
*

Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research The Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research (FMI) is a biomedical research institute founded in 1970. Based in Basel, Switzerland, the FMI is affiliated with the University of Basel and the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Resear ...

Campus Biotech The Campus Biotech is a Swiss institution hosting research institutes and biotechnology companies. The Campus Biotech is located in the former Merck Serono building, in Geneva ( Switzerland). The Campus Biotech is a part of the Swiss Innova ...

* Research Institute of Organic Agriculture

Museums

* The Swiss Science Center Technorama is a unique Science museum in the

municipality A municipality is usually a single administrative division having corporate status and powers of self-government or jurisdiction as granted by national and regional laws to which it is subordinate. The term ''municipality'' may also mean the go ...

Winterthur , neighboring_municipalities = Brütten, Dinhard, Elsau, Hettlingen, Illnau-Effretikon, Kyburg, Lindau, Neftenbach, Oberembrach, Pfungen, Rickenbach, Schlatt, Seuzach, Wiesendangen, Zell , twintowns = Hall in Tirol (Austria ...

in the canton of Zürich.

Researchers

With 57% of its researchers coming from other countries, Switzerland is the country with the world highest proportion of foreign researchers. Olivier Dessibourg, "La Suisse, carrefour de la circulation des cerveaux", ''

Le Temps ''Le Temps'' ( literally "The Time") is a Swiss French-language daily newspaper published in Berliner format in Geneva by Le Temps SA. It is the sole nationwide French-language non-specialised daily newspaper of Switzerland. Since 2021, it has ...

'', Thursday 15 November 2012, p. 14.

Scientific

Astronomy and space program

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 Beyond Gravity is the space-oriented segment of the Swiss technology group RUAG. At a total of fourteen sites in Switzerland ( Zurich, Emmen and Nyon), Sweden ( Gothenburg, Linköping), Finland (Tampere), Germany ( Coswig), USA (Denver, Tit ...

(payload fairings) or Maxon Motors (mars rovers).

Claude Nicollier 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 t ...

is a Swiss Astronaut and flew several missions with the

United States space program The United States has developed many space programs since the beginning of the spaceflight era in the mid-20th century. The United States Government delivers space program solutions from three primary agencies: NASA for civil space; DoD for Mil ...

. In the field of astronomy,

Michel Mayor Michel Gustave Édouard Mayor (; born 12 January 1942) is a Swiss astrophysicist and professor emeritus at the University of Geneva's Department of Astronomy. He formally retired in 2007, but remains active as a researcher at the Observatory o ...

discovered in 1995, 51 Pegasi B, the first

extrasolar planet An exoplanet or extrasolar planet is a planet outside the Solar System. The first possible evidence of an exoplanet was noted in 1917 but was not recognized as such. The first confirmation of detection occurred in 1992. A different planet, init ...

orbiting a sun-like star.

Mathematics

Leonhard Euler Leonhard Euler ( , ; 15 April 170718 September 1783) was a Swiss mathematician, physicist, astronomer, geographer, logician and engineer who founded the studies of graph theory and topology and made pioneering and influential discoveries in ma ...

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 Pierre-Simon, marquis de Laplace (; ; 23 March 1749 – 5 March 1827) was a French scholar and polymath whose work was important to the development of engineering, mathematics, statistics, physics, astronomy, and philosophy. He summarized ...

expresses Euler's influence on mathematics: "Read Euler, read Euler, he is the master of us all." 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 In mathematics, a function from a set to a set assigns to each element of exactly one element of .; the words map, mapping, transformation, correspondence, and operator are often used synonymously. The set is called the domain of the functi ...

. The

Bernoulli family The Bernoulli family () of Basel was a patrician family, notable for having produced eight mathematically gifted academics who, among them, contributed substantially to the development of mathematics and physics during the early modern period. ...

produced many notable scientists (

Bernoulli number In mathematics, the Bernoulli numbers are a sequence of rational numbers which occur frequently in analysis. The Bernoulli numbers appear in (and can be defined by) the Taylor series expansions of the tangent and hyperbolic tangent functions, ...

Bernoulli's principle In fluid dynamics, Bernoulli's principle states that an increase in the speed of a fluid occurs simultaneously with a decrease in static pressure or a decrease in the fluid's potential energy. The principle is named after the Swiss mathematici ...

, Bernoulli's rule...).

Physics

Albert Einstein Albert Einstein ( ; ; 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist, widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest and most influential physicists of all time. Einstein is best known for developing the theory ...

(naturalized in 1901) 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'' = ''mc''² and also contributed in many other areas (

cosmology Cosmology () is a branch of physics and metaphysics dealing with the nature of the universe. The term ''cosmology'' was first used in English in 1656 in Thomas Blount's ''Glossographia'', and in 1731 taken up in Latin by German philosopher ...

, solid state physics). Einstein was named " Person of the Century" by ''Time''. More recently, in 1987,

Karl Alexander Müller Karl may refer to: People * Karl (given name), including a list of people and characters with the name * Karl der Große, commonly known in English as Charlemagne * Karl Marx, German philosopher and political writer * Karl of Austria, last Austria ...

received the Nobel prize for his work on

High-temperature superconductivity High-temperature superconductors (abbreviated high-c or HTS) are defined as materials that behave as superconductors at temperatures above , the boiling point of liquid nitrogen. The adjective "high temperature" is only in respect to previou ...

. Furthermore, the CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) is located in Switzerland near

Chemistry

In the field of chemistry

Germain Henri Hess 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. Early li ...

is known for his discovery of the Hess's law.

Albert Hofmann Albert Hofmann (11 January 1906 – 29 April 2008) was a Swiss chemist known for being the first to synthesize, ingest, and learn of the psychedelic effects of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD). Hofmann's team also isolated, named and synthesi ...

discovered the

Lysergic acid diethylamide Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), also known colloquially as acid, is a potent psychedelic drug. Effects typically include intensified thoughts, emotions, and sensory perception. At sufficiently high dosages LSD manifests primarily mental, vi ...

(LSD).

Paul Hermann Müller Paul Hermann Müller, also known as Pauly Mueller (12 January 1899 – 13 October 1965), was a Swiss chemist who received the 1948 Nobel prize in Physiology or Medicine for his 1939 discovery of insecticidal qualities and use of DDT in the cont ...

received the Nobel prize for his discovery of the insecticidal qualities of

DDT Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, commonly known as DDT, is a colorless, tasteless, and almost odorless crystalline chemical compound, an organochloride. Originally developed as an insecticide, it became infamous for its environmental impacts. ...

Engineering

According to one EPFL source, globally, 4 out of the 20 top labs in the field of AI are located in Switzerland.

Biological and earth sciences

Friedrich Miescher Johannes Friedrich Miescher (13 August 1844 – 26 August 1895) was a Swiss physician and biologist. He was the first scientist to isolate nucleic acid in 1869. He also identified protamine and made a number of other discoveries. Miescher had i ...

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.

Emil Theodor Kocher Emil Theodor Kocher (25 August 1841 – 27 July 1917) was a Swiss physician and medical researcher who received the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work in the physiology, pathology and surgery of the thyroid. Among his many a ...

(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 Walter Rudolf Hess (17 March 1881 – 12 August 1973) 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 Eg ...

(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 Werner Arber (born 3 June 1929 in Gränichen, Aargau) 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 dis ...

(Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1978) is known for his discovery of

restriction endonucleases A restriction enzyme, restriction endonuclease, REase, ENase or'' restrictase '' is an enzyme that cleaves DNA into fragments at or near specific recognition sites within molecules known as restriction sites. Restriction enzymes are one class o ...

which are essential for all modern biotechnology. The Swiss born

Edmond H. Fischer Edmond Henri Fischer (April 6, 1920 – August 27, 2021) was a Swiss-American biochemist. He and his collaborator Edwin G. Krebs were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1992 for describing how reversible phosphorylation works ...

(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 The immune system is a network of biological processes that protects an organism from diseases. It detects and responds to a wide variety of pathogens, from viruses to parasitic worms, as well as cancer cells and objects such as wood splinte ...

Psychology

Carl Jung Carl Gustav Jung ( ; ; 26 July 1875 – 6 June 1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology. Jung's work has been influential in the fields of psychiatry, anthropology, archaeology, literature, phi ...

(1875–1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist and the founder of

Analytical Psychology Analytical psychology ( de , Analytische Psychologie, sometimes translated as analytic psychology and referred to as Jungian analysis) is a term coined by Carl Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist, to describe research into his new "empirical science ...

. Jung is considered the first modern psychiatrist to view the human psyche as "by nature religious" and make it the focus of exploration.

Notes and references

Swiss technology powers Mars mission, Swissinfo.ch

Oerlikon Space

External links

Official portal of Swiss universities

All Swiss university programmes

myScience.ch Swiss portal for research and innovation

The State Secretariat for Education and Research

The Ranking Forum of Swiss Universities
{{DEFAULTSORT:Science And Technology In Switzerland