47.5606° N, 7.5906° E
BASEL
Most Famous People Born in Basel, Switzerland
- Notable people
- 1,646
- Peak decade
- 1950s
- Median birth year
- 1922
- Most distinctive
- Art Historian 8.0×
A Rhine city whose distinctive professions are art historians, philologists, theologians, historians, and mathematicians — the trades of a humanist university town that published Erasmus, Holbein, and the first printed Greek New Testament. Euler was born here, so were both Bernoulli brothers, and Jacob Burckhardt more or less invented art history at the university. The 15th- and 16th-century bench is one of the heaviest in Switzerland, and Roger Federer is the most recent addition.
One face per century — the most globally famous figure born in Basel during each.
Notable Births by Decade
Click a decade to filter the list below. Peak: 1950s with 150 notable births.
What Basel Is Known For
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Politician is Basel's biggest profession — 10% of all notables (157).
Basel over-indexes on art historian — 8.0× the global rate.
Basel under-produces football — only 0.4× the global rate.
Profession Mix Over Time
Each band shows a profession family's share of Basel's notable births by decade. Hover the chart for the breakdown at any decade.
- Writing
- Science
- Politics & Law
- Art & Design
- Film & TV
- Sports
- Other
- Filtered to 1530s Clear ×
Felix Plater
1536 - 1614
Theodor Zwinger
1533 - 1588
Leonhard Thurneysser
1531 - 1596
Basilius Amerbach the Younger
1533 - 1591
Joachim Meyer
1537 - 1571
Ambrosius Frobenius
1537 - 1595
Hans Hug Kluber
1535 - 1578
Aurelius Frobenius
1539 - 1587
Samuel Heiland
1533 - 1592
Siegfried Apiarius
1530 - 1565
Samuel Holzach
1536 - 1616
Isaak Keller
1530 - 1596